PSA Files: Lot 54D1901
Memorandum by Mr. Charlton Ogburn2 to the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs (Rusk)3
Further Aspects of the Basic Difficulty in the Far East
A telegram received last week from our Legation in Saigon pointing out that the Soviet Union and Communist China have yet to accredit representatives to Ho Chi-minh’s regime comes at a time when I gather that we are considering raising our Legation in Saigon to an Embassy, which I suppose would mean that we should then have an ambassador accredited not only to Vietnam but also to Cambodia and even to the mountain kingdom of Laos, with its population of about one million.
The contrast between the Soviet course and our own with respect to representation in Indochina throws light on an aspect of a problem I touched on in an earlier memorandum on the “Basic Difficulty in the Far East”4—namely, the reasons why our leadership in Asian countries seems to produce the opposite results from those we intend.
Ho Chi-minh’s5 “Democratic Republic of Vietnam” declared its independence in August 1945. Yet it was not until early 1950 that the Soviet Union even recognized it. By contrast, it will be remembered that we recognized Bao Dai’s6 Government the moment the French gave the all-clear. Soviet official stand-offishness with respect to the Chinese Communists was a conspicuous feature of their relationship until the autumn of 1949. The scale of assistance with which the Soviet Union has provided the Peiping regime after recognizing it has been minor by our standards of foreign aid. Indeed, for some time it appeared that the Soviet Union was taking more than it was giving. This, indeed, seems to be a common feature of Soviet relations with non-Russian Communist bodies. To a degree that must be really astonishing to us, who conceive of support of non-Communist elements in terms of prodigious outlays by the United States, the Asian Communists have been left to fend for themselves materially. With its very large production of gold and with what must be its huge quantities of weapons, it would seem that the Soviet Union could do far more than it has done for the Communists in Indochina, Burma, Malaya, the Philippines, etc.
[Page 7]I cannot pretend to know what the Russian motives may be in their evidently cautious policy, but certain of the effects of this policy are apparent and are of the greatest significance to us.
In the first place, in withholding their sanction of a new regime until it has demonstrated that its chances of survival and success are good, the Russians avoid the great loss of prestige which comes from backing a losing horse. It looked for a while as if they were going to suffer just such a loss in Korea, but this contingency, it now appears, had been prepared for. Soviet recognition, in short, comes high. Asian Communist parties which set up regimes the Soviet Union is willing to recognize must feel the satisfaction of great accomplishment. By contrast, it seems to me that our continued recognition of the Chinese Nationalists after they had lost China and our instant recognition of the states of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos eight months before they had even received the degree of independence they won at Pau and while much the greater part of Vietnam was not controlled by another regime, greatly reduced the intrinsic value of American recognition in Asian eyes and placed our prestige in hostage to a most unpropitious future. Raising our Minister to the Indochinese States to an Ambassador will impress no one east of Suez and merely give further evidence that we are easily had. If Bao Dai is as deficient in the qualities of leadership and determination as we are told, one would imagine that what he needs is incentive—such as the winning of American recognition—and not the satiation of his desires, including those he has presumably not even expressed.
In the second place, the practice of the Russians in giving guidance, instructions, and orders to Communist elements in other countries but withholding large-scale material assistance tends to bring out real leaders among these elements and to develop among them the qualities of determination, resourcefulness, and fortitude. It gives them the incentive of advancing a cause in which they believe. They have the position of contributors, not beneficiaries. They are supporting the Communist cause, not being supported by it. The effect on them, if one may judge, is exhilarating.
What we have been doing is to support anti-Communist elements where the situation in the world demands that they support us—as the Communist elements support the Soviet Union. The cause of the free world in Asia has become not an Asian cause (which it certainly should be, since it is the Asians and not we who are directly menaced) but an American cause in which we are pleading for adherents and turning ourselves inside out to keep afloat those we have. Those we have lined up with us in Asia have none of the sense of being the advance guard of a great and noble cause of which we are the base and Fatherland. Those Asians who give evidence that they do feel they are making history and have undergone sacrifices for great objectives, [Page 8] and who evidently feel that they are moved by impelling ideals are the very ones we have helped least and who are most wary of enlisting in a cause which they conceive of as an American snare. It is ironical but apparently none the less true that Asians fighting on the Communist side with Mao7 and Ho, whom we feel the Asians should regard as the exponents of tyranny, have the inspiring sense of fighting for national freedom, while in the camps of Chiang,8 Quirino,9 and Bao Dai there is a strong feeling that we must see them through because they are serving our cause.
We are continually hurt and bewildered because the more independent minded Asians refuse to recognize their Communist fellows as puppets of Moscow but persist in regarding other Asians whom we are supporting as puppets of the United States. But this feeling can only continue as long as our policy of supporting non-Communist elements continues in its present form while the Soviet Union forces its adherents to fight their own battles. As long as Soviet favors are hard to come by while the United States gives the appearance of a call-girl, we shall, I fear, continue to serve as a refuge for weaklings and incompetents.
The prospects in the Philippines today give a good example of how our policy betrays us. Without our aid, Quirino’s regime will eventually be swept away. It is a weak regime in all save the talents required to retain office by dishonest means, and it should in fact be swept away if the Philippines is to be strong. In exchange for certain “reforms”, however—as if a corrupt and dishonest leadership could be reformed—we are going to save this regime from the penalties of its shortcomings. Now consider at the same time the case of Colonel Velasquez, whom I understand we consider as a white hope and whom we have been trying to persuade to take a key military position. Velasquez refuses to serve under Quirino. The end of our policy will be to fix the Philippines in the permanent status of a liability to us and at the same time force Velasquez and others like him to accept Quirino and thus suffer demoralization and the loss of self-respect or drive them into the ranks of our enemies. The Philippine Islands are hardly likely to suffer a Communist invasion. But if things continue in their present course, one may foresee the time when the American army will be fighting a Philippine guerilla army, which, under Communist colors, will have the support of the Nationalists just as Ho’s regime has had. The process of recolonializing the Philippines [Page 9] will then be well advanced—except that we shall not get away with it. It was in order to try to avoid this outcome that I proposed in a recent memorandum to you another way of strengthening the Philippines. The memorandum, being written in haste, contained inconsistencies and rather wild suggestions, but at least the means it proposed might open up prospects different from the dreary ones we face.
To sum up, it would seem that through our present methods of supporting anti-Communist elements we risk creating situations of weakness rather than of strength. As Mr. Heideman of this office points out, our maternalistic material support of such elements may not only soften them but also undermine their position by degrading their stature in the eyes of their countrymen. Mr. Heideman offers the hypothesis that the National Government of China might actually have prevailed over the Chinese Communists—whose military strength was so much less than its own—had we not through the abundant and conspicuous support we gave enabled the Communists to brand it successfully as a creature of the United States.
Lastly, by making the anti-Communist cause in the Far East our cause, by demonstrating so plainly that our policies in the Far East are based upon a containment of Communism, we have encouraged the Asians in their present maddening misconceptions as to the nature of the cold war. We know very well that our Government cannot carry out a foreign policy which is not supported by the electorate, that we cannot get very far ahead of American opinion, but we do not seem to have realized that the United States cannot hope to succeed if it tries to run far in advance of Asian opinion.
The nature of our intervention in Asia has, it seems to me, had the primary effect of confusing the issues. When the Asians have undergone those trials that bring the strong, genuine leaders to the fore, when they have come to understand the alternatives that face them, when they urge us to comprehend the necessity of condemning the Chinese Communists and saving the United Nations, of holding on to Formosa, of helping the nationalist elements in Indochina, and of assisting anti-Communist guerrillas in China, then the situation will be such that we can save Asia. I cannot see that it will be until that time comes. Given a different behavior on our part, I believe it could come fast—very fast. Can we not stop taking the lead everywhere and making what seems to me display of ourselves? Can we not start being the judge of other peoples and stop being the one who is judged? Can we not be a little harder to get, and let the favor of the United States be what other peoples aspire to? Darn it, they are the ones who are threatened with a fate worse than death—not we.
- Files of the Office of Philippine and Southeast Asian Affairs, 1937–1952.↩
- Policy Information Officer, Bureau of Far Eastern Affairs.↩
- Transmitted through Livingston T. Merchant, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, and John K. Emmerson, Planning Adviser, Bureau of Far Eastern Affairs.↩
- Not printed.↩
- President of the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam.↩
- Chief of State of Viet-Nam.↩
- Chairman of the Central People’s Government Council, People’s Republic of China, and Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.↩
- President of the Republic of China.↩
- Elpidio Quirino, President of the Republic of the Philippines.↩