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CONTENTS
Vol. 4, No. 2: Summer 1972
Christine and Gordon White - The Politics of Vietnamization
Ngo Vinh Long - The Weaknesses of Vietnamization
Herbert P. Bix - Report on Japan 1972
David Wilson - Leathernecks in North China 1945
Keith Buchanan - The Geography of Empire / Portfolio of Maps
Frank Baldwin - Patrolling the Empire: Reflections on the USS
Pueblo
Victor Lippit - Economic Development and Welfare in China
Communications
BCAS/Critical AsianStudies
www.bcasnet.org
CCAS Statement of Purpose
Critical Asian Studies continues to be inspired by the statement of purpose
formulated in 1969 by its parent organization, the Committee of Concerned
Asian Scholars (CCAS). CCAS ceased to exist as an organization in 1979,
but the BCAS board decided in 1993 that the CCAS Statement of Purpose
should be published in our journal at least once a year.
We first came together in opposition to the brutal aggression of
the United States in Vietnam and to the complicity or silence of
our profession with regard to that policy. Those in the field of
Asian studies bear responsibility for the consequences of their
research and the political posture of their profession. We are
concerned about the present unwillingness of specialists to speak
out against the implications of an Asian policy committed to en-
suring American domination of much of Asia. We reject the le-
gitimacy of this aim, and attempt to change this policy. We
recognize that the present structure of the profession has often
perverted scholarship and alienated many people in the field.
The Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars seeks to develop a
humane and knowledgeable understanding of Asian societies
and their efforts to maintain cultural integrity and to confront
such problems as poverty, oppression, and imperialism. We real-
ize that to be students of other peoples, we must first understand
our relations to them.
CCAS wishes to create alternatives to the prevailing trends in
scholarship on Asia, which too often spring from a parochial
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ism. Our organization is designed to function as a catalyst, a
communications network for both Asian and Western scholars, a
provider of central resources for local chapters, and a commu-
nity for the development of anti-imperialist research.
Passed, 2830 March 1969
Boston, Massachusetts
I
\
Conlenls
I
\
Christine & 2 The Politics of Vietnamization
Gordon White
Ngo Vinh Long 17 The Weaknesses of Vietnamization
Herbert P. Bix 22 Report on Japan 1972
David wi lson 33 Leathernecks in North China, 1945
Keith Buchanan 40 The Geography of Empire / portfolio of maps
Frank BaldlJin 54 Patrolling the Empire: Reflections on the USS Pueblo
Victor Lippit 76 Economic Development and Welfare in China
87 Communications
88 Contributors
Editors: Perry Link / Steve Andors Managing
I
editor: Jon Livingston Graphics: Steve Hart /
Jon Livingston Staff for this issue: Felicia
Oldfather / Steve Hart Editorial Board: Rod
Aya / Frank Baldwin / Marianne Bastid / Herbert
Bix / Noam Chomsky / John Dower / Kathleen .
Gough / Pichard Kagan / Huynh Kim Khanh /
Jonathan l'ursky / Victor Nee / Felicia Old
father / Gail Omvedt / James Peck / Franz
Schurmann / Mark Selden / Hari Sharma /
Yamashita Tatsuo
I
Bulletin Correspondance: BAr, 604 ission Street,
Room 1001, San Francisco, California 94105.
Manuscripts: Steve Andors, P.O. Box 24, Minetto,
N.Y. 13115, in three copies if possible.
Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars national
office: Building 600T, Stanford, California
94305. For further information, please look
at the inside front cover.
Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, Summer 1972, Volume 4, Number 2. Published
quarterly in spring, summer, fall, and winter. $6.00; student rate $4.00; library
rate $10.00. Foreign rates: regular $7.00; student rate $4.00; overseas second
class airmail printed matter $15.00. Jon Livingston, Publisher, 604 Mission
Street, Room 1001, San Francisco, California 94105. Second class postage paid
at San Francisco, California.
Copyright (c) BulZetin of Concerned Asian Scholars, 1972.
The maps in "The Geography of Empire" are reprinted with permission from
Open Secret: The Kissinger-Nixon DOctrine, edited by Virginia Brodine and
Mark Selden (New York: Harper and Row, 1972).
The Polilies of VielnaDlbalion
Christine and Gordon White
Saigon, January 28, 1972
President Nixon's January 25th speech
represented not the beginning but the end
of negotiations. It signified that the
u.s. is downgrading the Paris talks and
that no further secret negotiations are
taking place. Nixon's statement of the
"u. s. -South Vietnam Proposal for a Ne
gotiated Settlement" and its rejection
by the other side is the latest clarifi
cation of a truth which has underlain
the Paris Peace Talks since they began,
namely that the contradictions between
the Nixon Administration's vision of a
peace in Indochina and that of the
Provisional Revolutionary Government of
South Vietnam (PRG) and the North Viet
namese are irreconcilable. Nixon has
never been, and is still not, willing to
make the kind of concessions necessary
to make real progress in the negotiations
because he has throughout been committed
to the maintenance of a staunchly anti
communist government in Saigon and the
continuation of dominant U.S. influence
over the domestic politics of South Viet
nam. As a result, the PRG has not been
willing to make the kind of concessions
which would allow scope for negotiation
because this would mean committing polit
ical suicide by entrusting itself to
the tender mercies of the Thieu govern
ment.
In short, given the unchanging American
goals in Vietnam which in essence are to
continue the war by proxy until it is
won, Vietnamization has all along been
the only practical option for the Nixon
Administration. Vietnamization is not a
"complement" or a "spur" to negotiation,
as American government spokesmen claim
but the only real set of means to achieve
America's goals. Practically speaking,
negotiations and Vietnamization are
fundamentally incompatible strategies.
In his speech of January 25, President
Nixon declared that "the path of Vietnam
ization has been successful," and in the
slight modifications introduced in the
peace proposal presented in that speech
--for example, the stepping down of
President Thieu one month before presi
dential elections--he seemed very opti
mistic about the strength of the "Viet
namized" political system under Presi
dent Thieu. In this article, which fo
cuses on the politics of Vietnamization
inside South Vietnam, we will try to
account for some of the Nixon Administra
tion's optimism and to analyze some of
the political defects inherent in the
strategy of Vietnamization which makes
it vulnerable to political and military
pressures from the PRG side.
The Political Strategy
The u.S. Vietnamization plan is
basically twofold: the first aspect,
Vietnamization of the military side
of the war, is already well known in the
United States. This is to be achieved
through a beefed-up South Vietnamese
Army (ARVN), massive military aid, and
the maintenance of sufficient American
air power to prove decisive in any
major military encounter between the PRG/
North Vietnamese forces and the ARVN.
But Vietnamization is more than
turning the bulk of the war over to ARVN
and exchanging yellow for white corpses.
The U.S. has perceived the need for a
politico-economic-administrative strategy:
to provide a stable context for prose
cuting the war. In the words of the RAND ;
Corporation's Guy Pauker, Vietnamization !
"involves the consolidation of the emerg
ing politico-military system in South
Vietnam to the degree necessary to
2
absorb future inputs of American resources rejected their claim to represent the
,
without direct American management but
with enough efficiency to maintain a
favorable balance of forces against the
Communists." The other side understands
this clearly and that is why the PRG
demands not only an end to American
support for ARVN but also the with
drawal of American support from the
Thieu government (GVN).
This second part of the U.S. stra
tegy is more intricate and difficult to
manage and aims at the preservation and
consolidation of a military dictatorship
with one man at its head. This regime,
whose core is the army and the National
Police, will, it is hoped, be able to
maintain and extend its power by a mix
ture of political techniques ranging
from Chicago-style machine politics to
political indoctrination and large
doses of repression.
This political solution was not
arrived at without debate or without
alternatives. In rough terms, there
were two general political strategies
proposed. The idea of "accommodation,"
articulated in its academic form by
RAND's Gerald Hickey and Harvard's
Samuel Huntington, called for recog
nition of the diverse South Viet
namese socio-political (the
Buddhists, Cao Dai, Catholics, Hoa
Hao, Montagnards, etc.) and required
the sharing of real power among these
groups in an American-style corpora
tist democratic polity. This program
allowed for the participation of the
PRG in the political process: the PRG
would be recognized as the predominant
force in a number of districts or even
provinces and, like the Cao Dai reli
gious sect or the Montagnards, would be
allowed to control the politics of their
locality. The PRG would thus be con
demned to the status of a permanent
minority, rather like the role of the
Communist Party in present-day France.
This plan is similar to the solution
in the 1962 Geneva Accords in Laos,
where the communist-led Pathet Lao were
granted control of two provinces and
even a number of cabinet positions.
Although it was unlikely that the
PRG would accept a proposal which
national, and not a regional, interest,
at least it offered the PRG some role
in South Vietnamese politics and thus I,
might have constituted a step in the
J
direction of a negotiated political
I
settlement. Had this strategy been pur
I
sued by the United States, there would
have been a real role for the peace
negotiations in Paris.
The second proposed strategy has been
presented systematically by Guy Pauker,
whose idea of Vietnamization assumes that
a negotiated settlement is unfeasible be
cause the positions of the two sides are
incompatible. It opposes the sharing of
power among the different socio-political
forces in South Vietnam on the grounds
that this would lead to a reassertion of
the which is endemic in
modern South Vietnamese politics and open
the door to the better organized and
politically more effective PRG. This
program argues for the establishment of
a highly centralized authoritarian re
gime in Saigon which would refuse to
share power and would deny the PRG
access to political power, ultimately
trying to eradicate it.
The strategy which has evolved in
practice and which was dramatically
reaffirmed by U.S. support for Thieu's
one-man election in October 1971 is
the second strategy, with elements of
the first which function both to strengthen
the regime and to conceal its nature.
In this strategy, the Thieu government
is the basic guarantee of stability and
must not be replaced or undermined. Non
PRG opposition groups are tolerated and
encouraged to become moderate and to play
the game of electoral politics, even
though they are denied access to signi
ficant power. In the short run, power must
be centralized and not shared with "un
disciplined" opposition groups such as
i
the An Quang Buddhists or Big Minh's
f
I
men. Later, perhaps in a decade, the
dispersion or transfer of power is con
ceivable if the non-communist opposition
forces prove themselves to be well organ
ized, disciplined and anti-communist.
Thieu cannot be replaced for some time
because no opposition force, however
politically reliable in American eyes,
3
has the organizational resources to re
place his men at all levels of politics,
from national to province, district and
village. (The American embassy in Saigon
well remembers the ins tability and con
fusion which followed the removal of Diem
in 1963.) With such a program in opera
tion, the Paris Peace Talks are of little
value except for propaganda.
Much attention has been paid in the
U.S. press to the authoritarian, unre
presentative and corrupt aspects of the
Thieu government. What this criticism
has in most cases failed to do, however,
is to analyze the undeniable sources of
strength which underpin this govern
ment. To criticize it as unrepresenta
tive and lacking in popular support is
fair comment, but in terms of assessing
the present political weight of the
government, such a consideration may
well be of limited relevance. To attack
Thieu for authoritarianism is of course
accurate, but the fact remains that in
timidation and head cracking, especially
when they are combined with certain non
coercive methods, have proven quite
successful of late in dealing with the
more outspoken urban opposition groups
in Saigon. To cite instances of cor
ruption as indicative of the rottenness
of the regime is correct from a moral
point of view, but these cases might in
fact be an indication of one of the
basic organizational principles of the
government which, like the pork barrel
and bribery of U.S. politics past and
present, is the political motor of a
functioning system of power. To accuse
Thieu of depending too much on American
support is also correct, but that does
not necessarily mean that all the polit
ical wind seeps out of his balloon if
the U.S. presence declines.
The core of Thieu's system of rule
is the vast and complicated structure
of military, paramilitary, and police
organizations which have been built up
here during the American presence, par
ticularly since the Tet Offensive in
1968. The army is the political backbone
of the regime because Thieu lacks signi
ficant civilian support. Until recently
the well organized Catholic community
gave partial support to Thieu. Now,
however, opposition has developed in
both progressive and conservative wings
of the Catholic movement. Thieu's lack
of organized civilian backing can be seen
from the failure of his National Social
Democratic Front coalition launched
in May 1969 and the difficulties he has
been encountering recently in launching
a new coalitional party.
Quite apart from the numerical ex
pansion of the ARVN regular forces since
the General Mobilization order of June
1968, a great deal of attention been
paid to building up various kinds of local
forces, which the American military refer
to as "Oriental Minutemen." The Regional
Forces (RF) are full-time soldiers or
ganized into companies under provincial
control; the Popular Forces (PF) are full
time soldiers organized into platoons
under district control; the Popular Self
Defence Forces (PSDF), men between 15 and
18 and over 43 years of age, are part
time militia operating at the village
level. These organizations are aimed at
extending the government's military in
fluence down to the village level to
provide an armed force capable of contest
ing an area militarily with PRG local
forces. Needless to say, these forces
have political value to Thieu apart
from their military function. Elements
of the PSDF are used for intimidation,
'election campaigning or "bringing out
the vote." The urban PSDF is often com
posed of street-corner youth who spend
their duty hours playing cards and who
are used by the government as bully
to break up opposition meetings or do
precinct work during elections.
In short, the government has been
able to impress most able-bodied men in
the areas it controls, of
age, into some form of military organ
ization. For those who are not in full
time ARVN units, participation in the PSDl
is compulsory. A man without PSDF papers
is likely to be picked off the street,
in one of the constant police spot-checks
and thrown into jailor drafted.
This militarization of South Vietnames
society not only makes the going harder
militarily for the PRG--for even unwillinl
draftees will shoot to defend themselves
4
in a fire-fight with the other side-
but it also paralyzes potential oppo
sition forces. It is one way of dealing
with dissident students short of actual
arrest. Students are sent out of Saigon
for a period of four to five weeks of
military training each year. They com
plain that the training course is un
necessarily grueling and intentionally
dangerous, especially for students weak
after prolonged preparation for exam
inations. There were demonstrations last
year after several Saigon students d i e ~
in training. Examinations become swords
of Damocles because if the students fail
they can be inducted into the army im
mediately. Upon graduation, if they do
not get some kind of government-approved
deferment (for example, as teachers) or
if they cannot arrange a favorable
assignment (for example, in the National
Police) through payola, they are drafted
for the duration of the war. Those re
garded as particularly troublesome ele
ments are usually sent to the more dis
tant and dangerous outposts. If a young
man finds these alternatives unaccept
able, he has two further choices: to
go to jailor to join the PRG side; the
latter option is not attractive to many
otherwise idealistic progressive young
men because of the incredible hardships
which face the PRG forces in the forests
and mountainous areas. Still, successive
waves of students have joined the PRG
in the countryside and others remain in
the cities as liaison workers.
Apart from the numerical expansion
of the army, Thieu has also attempted to
increase the political reliability of
its lower echelons by trying to resusci
tate a system of political commissars
down to the company level comparable to
that used in socialist countries. For
this purpose, advisors have been imported
from Taiwan to teach at the Political
Warfare Cadre Training Center in Saigon.
Chiang Kai-shek's ruling Kuomintang
Party has copied a system of army polit
ical commissars from the Soviet model
and the system still exists in Taiwan
as a major political control technique
to maintain Kuomintang power.
Another developing aspect of Thieu's
political machine is his use of the
paramilitary organization of Rural De
velopment (RD) cadres. These black
pyjamaed cadres, trained at the CIA
sponsored Chi Linh National Training
Center at Vungtau between 1966 and 1970,
have played an important role in the
r
government's counter-insurgency, para
,
i
military, and intelligence operations
in the countryside. They are perceived ,
as an important political resource be
,
cause they are the only organization on
the government side, with the exception
of the army and the National Police,
which has the capacity to reach down
into the villages. As such they can be
an invaluable part of Thieu's projected
political machine. American Civil Opera
tions and Rural Development Support (CORDS)
advisors in Saigon state that the RD
cadres were originally intended to be
phased out by redeployment, but now may
not be, since Thieu has shown interest
in retaining a "permanent cadre" force
of over 16,000.
According to the CORDS special advisor
to the RD cadre program, the role of the
RD cadre in an election is to get the
people to vote, to watch over the election
boxes, to help the voter fill out his
ballot if he is illiterate and, if ne
cessary, to take voters physically to
the polls. RD cadres have also prepared
"village profile books" for most of the
villages in South Vietnam which contain
the names, ages and addresses of PRG
sympathizers living in a particular
village and the names of members of the
"V. C. Infrastructure" who once operated
in the village and are now in hiding.
A current project is attempting to
supplement the "village profile books"
with photographs of PRG supporters se
cured from family photo albums. In short,
the RD cadre is at present playing the
role of political organizer and intelli
gence agent. With such a system in opera
tion, it is little wonder that the PRG
does not accept the President's "gen
erous" proposal that they lay down their
i
arms in a cease-fire and participate in
new South Vietnamese elections.
I
The National Police and kindred
security agencies have been expanded over
l
the past three years through sizeable
I
commitments of American aid and advisory
t
5
personnel. The budget for police work
will increase for fiscal 1972, although
the main U.S. financial commitment was
made in 1968 after the Tet Offensive.
In the 1971 the National Police Force
was increased from 80,000 to 122,000
in order to extend the police network
down to the village level.
Together these organizations, which
constitute a formidable politico-military
presence in both the countryside and the
cities of South Vietnam, amount to a
massive attempt to control all elements
of the South Vietnamese population. In
the countryside, the continual aim of the
system since 1969 has been the con
traction of PRG base areas. The popu
lation remaining in PRG base areas has
decreased as a result of bombing and
policies of population displacement.
Military operations and paramilitary
efforts such as the Phoenix assassina
tion program have taken their toll of
PRG cadres. The impairment of PRG re
cruiting and training methods is another
major objective of Thieu's repressive
apparatus in the countryside.
In the cities, the coercion machine
has been used to oppose the efforts of
the more radical opposition forces and
drive them underground. Plainclothes
police are everywhere in the schools,
colleges, offices and c a f ~ s of Saigon,
and opposition groups are infiltrated
by government agents. Political meetings
are broken up by police and local PSDF
units and protest demonstrations are
dispelled by tear gas and police clubs.
Effective leaders of the militant op
position have been picked off and jailed
or their effectiveness reduced by con
tinual harassment or threat of arrest.
One recent example of the police
approach to militant student opposition
is the case of the President of the Sai
gon Students' Union, Huynh Tan Ham, an
anti-war activist. The government first
arranged for money to be funneled to
pro-government candidates in the student
elections of mid-197l. Then in the actual
elections, policemen were ordered to
register as students and vote for the
pro-government candidates. Following his
"defeat" in this "election," Ham was
unanimously elected at a public student
meeting in Saigon to continue as Presi-
dent of the national Students' Union.
Concurrent with this struggle, Mam
managed quite an effective movement
against the one-man presidential elec
tion in October 1971. During the general
crack-down on all opponents of the
October election, he was forced under
ground and was finally arrested on
January 5, 1972. Although there is un
deniable evidence that he is being held
by the National Police, the government
claims that he has disappeared to ,join
the PRG, attempting thereby to conceal
their desire to torture and perhaps
eliminate him.
But if repression were the only way
in which the Thieu government operated,
it would be weaker than it is today.
One of the most interesting aspects of
the evolving political strategy of Viet
namization over the past three years
has been the Thieu-U.S. attempt to win
the acquiescence if not the support of
the rural population, which is seen as
the major security problem and as the
main source of recruitment and support
for the PRG forces. This aspect of the
strategy is reflected in Pauker's idea
of the basis of Vietnamization as a
"partnership between the military and
the rural masses." Beginning in 1967,
and particularly over the past three
years, the Thieu government's rhetoric
has emphasized the economic well-being
of the peasants over that of urban
dwellers. Previously, price controls
and import policies had favored urban
consumers and discriminated against
the rural population. Now, we are told,
agricultural development is being
pushed, particularly in the Delta,
through a package of policies designed
to maintain and increase the purchasing
power of the peasants--for example, by
letting the price of rice keep pace with
inflation and by ameliorating the terms
of trade between countryside and city
to the benefit fa the peasants. It is
claimed that new strains of "miracle"
rice have increased crop yields in
several areas of the Delta, and that
partial implementation of the "Land to
the Tiller" program instituted in 1970
has led to increased living standards
6
and certain gains in the equalization of
land holdings, although it is admitted
that the program is still hampered by
landlord resistance and corruption.
The primary purpose of these pro
grams is political rather than develop
mental, and the major impetus for pushing
them is the desire to eradicate PRG
support in the countryside rather than
a genuine attempt to lay the basis for
sustained economic development and social
justice. The Thieu-U.S. strategy has
changed from trying to win the hearts and
minds of the peasants to trying to buy
them. The government is also promoting
a series of other technical and socio
political reforms at the village level,
and even in purely technical projects
the political aspect is supreme. The
Thieu regime calculates that if the
peasant participates in, say, an irri
gation scheme sponsored by the govern
ment, he will seem to have committed him
self in some sense to the GVN side and
therefore be out of favor with the local
PRG forces. If a village becomes associ
ated with a government program, so runs
the theory, it would thus be vulnerable
to PRG reprisal--which, if it occurred,
would further push the inhabitants into
the GVN camp. Furthermore, the govern
ment: encourages "Village Self-Development"
projects, funded partly by the government
and partly by the villages. This tries
to drive a wedge between the PRG and the
village: either the villagers convince
the PRG not to des troy the project, or
the PRG alienates the population by
destroying their project--either way,
the American mission here considers it
a victory for the Thieu regime.
On the other hand, inflation and
the devaluation of the piastre have hit
the pocketbooks of urban dwellers, whose
salaries do not increase in pace with
inflation and who suffer particularly
from increased prices for rice and all
basic food items. Urban Vietnamese who
recall the rule of Diem compare today's
economic situation unfavorably with
those days. But the distance between
economic discontent and political turmoil
may be quite great, especially when the
city dweller is faced by a large apparatus
of coercive control and a lack of real
non-PRG political alternatives to Thieu.
Continued political stability in the
cities despite continued economic dis
content is a major assumption of the
Vietnamization strategy. The general
political climate at present in Saigon,
for example, would seem at least super
ficially to substantiate this analysis:
despair has been Vietnamized, particularly
among the intellectual community, and the
ordinary citizen has withdrawn deep into
his family, often behind barbed-wire
walls in the case of the middle class,
living for a short-range future. In
short, these economic policies of the
Thieu government are billed as a polit
ical program to win the allegiance of
the rural population, while the cities
are supposed to be less of a security
problem on the theory that they may
be dealt with by increased police force.
Opposition Forces
Another important factor in the South
Vietnamese political situation which has
changed significantly over the past
three years and can perhaps be counted
as a success for the political Vietnam
ization strategy is the change in the
attitude of certain opposition forces
toward the South Vietnamese regime. One
American foreign service officer in
Saigon stressed to us the distinction
between "the Thieu govePr/J1lent and the
South Vietnamese T'egime." By the latter
he meant the whole conception of the
Republic of South Vietnam, the bicameral
legislature, the Supreme Court, the
system of political rules and governmental
institutions, informed by the idea of an
American-style representative democracy.
It is of course apparent that the Thieu
government has made a mockery of any
real form of representative democracy,
but nevertheiess certain important
leadership elements of militant opposi
tion groups, such as the An Quang Budd
hists, have been bought off to the degree
that they now feel they have a stake in
the Republic of South Vietnam as it is
presently constituted. Although non-PRG
opposition groups are allowed only the
f a ~ a d e of power, for the short term this
seems to be not as important to certain
of their leaders as the feeling that
the present political system with its
7
American patriarch holds out both more
immediate benefits and more long-term
potential for them than a regime in
which the PRG played a major role. This
diversion of opposition leadership does
not, of course, imply a lesser degree
of discontent and militancy among the
rank and file of the groups.
In the eyes of the American embassy,
a window-dressing opposition within the
Thieu government strengthens its posi
tion vis-a-vis the PRG. A policy of
"moderation" has thus been promoted by
careful American designs which combine
the carrot and stick with the classic
imperialist policy of divide-and-rule.
Nowhere has the policy had a more
telling effect than on the An Quang Bud
dhist opposition bloc. Some leaders of
the militant Buddhist Church, once the
major non-communist opposition force
which helped bring down the Diem regime
and which in the past has been strongly
opposed to the Thieu regime, have now
virtually abandoned radical opposition
and is either cooperating with the
system or remaining inactive. This change
did not come about overnight. It was
accomplished with the help of a variety
of political tools wielded by the Amer
icans and succeeding South Vietnamese
governments: military and police re
pression, particularly at the time of
the suppression of the Central Region
Army and Buddhist uprising in 1966;
blackmail and intimidation; graft for
Church projects and bribes to indivi
duals. Economic rewards have been held
out to "reasonable" Buddhists at
the same time that police repression
was being carried out against radical
elements. The face behind the bars in
the famous photo of the tiger cages
can serve as a symbol of the repression-
it is that of a monk who was accused of
being Thich Tri Quang's liaison with
the PRG.
On the other hand, ever since the
overthrow of Diem, some Buddhist elements
have gotten a share of American aid
goodies: there are large and imposing
new pagodas in Saigon and elsewhere; a
Buddhist cultural center is rising in
Hue. A Buddhist university, Van Hanh,
was set up shortly after Diem's over-
S
throw. Its faculty includes many with
American educations, most of its library
was donated by the As ia Foundation, and
a certain number of scholarships are
available each year for its students
to study in American universities. After
years of opposing GVN elections as ille
gitimate, in 1970 the An Quang Church
put up its own list of candidates for the
National Assembly elections. This "Lotus
Slate" now has 15 men in the Senate,
and in the Lower House there is an
opposition bloc of about 30 represen
tatives consisting of An Quang people
and the Catholic-led Socialist bloc.
A weathervane of the change can be
seen in An Quang leader Thich Thien Minh,
victim of government imprisonment in
1969. Presently An Quang Youth Commissar,
he has turned against the left-wing Bud
dhist opposition. Just before the 1971
presidential elections, he expelled
radical anti-war Buddhist students who
had been active in the campaign against
the one-man election from the An Quang
youth hostel. Many suspect that he was
bribed by the Americans to do so, since
the students were also involved in a
campaign to burn American cars in pro
test against American support for the
one-man election. On January 1, 1972,
Minh announced the dissolution of the
An Quang student organization, claiming
that its leaders had PRG connections and
did not represent Buddhist interests.
The Buddhist Student Union was not
allowed to attend the last An Quang
National Congress in December 1971,
while Ambassador Bunker and Deputy
Ambassador Berger were invited. At this
last Congress an ambitious young monk
named Giac Duc was selected as Thich
Thien Uinh' s Assistant Youth Commissar.
Strongly anti-communist because of what
his excessively rich northern refugee
family suffered under the Vietminh,
Duc's views have been honed by six years
in an American university graduate pro
gram. His Ph.D. thesis for Claremont
presented Buddhism as a bulwark against
communism in Southeast Asia. He has been
known to give strongly anti-American
speeches to Buddhist gatherings, ex
plaining to American friends that this
is just to get the audience's sympathy
before turning to the anti-communist
punch at the end. "That's politics t " he
explains
t
quaffing American beer with
unmonkish gusto.
This cleavage between the An Quang
Church and student or other urban oppo
sition "struggle forces" prevails in some
of the Church's provincial strongholds.
In Hue
t
a split is developing between
militantly anti-Thieut anti-American
students and professors and some in
creasingly moderate leaders of the Bud
dhist Church. There once had been a power
ful alliance between them.
The Economic Strategy
As direct U.S. ground military in
volvement in the war declines t the role
of American military and economic aid in
maintaining a strong anti-communist govern
ment in Saigon becomes more important. The
Saigon army iS
t
of course, totally de
pendent on the U,S' t and large-scale
military aid will continue to pour in
over the next few years. But this is not
the immediate concern of this article.
Here we shall discuss the role of economic
aid and foreign investment in pursuing
the political goals of Vietnamization.
According to Guy Pauker t "Vietnam
ization requires that economic aid to
the GVN be regarded as an integral part
of the war effort." The tasks before
the U.S. in the economic realm are
basically threefold: (1) to cushion the
impact of American military disengage
ment through increased economic aid;
(2) to maintain economic aid at appro
priately high levels for the next three
or four years in the face of political
pressures in the United States so as
to guarantee the continued economic
and political stability of the Thieu
government; (3) eventually to reduce the
enormous dependence of the South Viet
namese economy on U.S. Government aid
by stimulating foreign investment and
encouraging exports---and to achieve
all three aims without seriously im
pairing American influence on the
policies of the GVN. American private
investment is clearly seen by the em
bassy as playing an important role
in the transition.
At present the South Vietnamese
economy is an artificial one and the
continued existence of the Thieu govern
ment depends a great deal on the con
tinuation of a high level of economic
aid. Through the Commercial Import Pro
gram, targeted for $300 million in the
U.S. aid budget for 1972 t come the con
sumer goods which placate urban con
sumer demand and restrain inflation.
Many urban consumers t particularly in
Saigont have no choice but to use
foreign products. South Vietnam used
to export sugar t but now consumers must
use the foreign white refined stuff.
More than 250
t
OOO water buffalo have
been killed in the war, and as a result
U.S. aid is needed to provide agricul
tural machinery and chemical fertilizer
to blunt rural discontent. Funds are
also provideu to underwrite the compen
sation costs of the Land to the Tiller
program and to buy off potentially dis
ruptive opposition to Thieu. From U.S.
aid come the money and privileges which
are dispensed as patronage by Thieu to
his supporters and used to pay the
salaries of the armed forces and govern
ment bureaucracy--in short, to maintain
a personal political machine. U.S. aid
money is the machine's fuel and corrup
tion is its oil. Apart from the revenues
from USAID-administered funds, 1970 and
1971 saw an increase in U.S. Department
of Defense financing of military-re
lated pacification programs, such as
the National Police and the Chieu Hoi
program for PRG defectors.
In short, massive economic aid
enables the Thieu government to make
politically useful economic decisions
which would be impossible in any normal
state of the economy. To maintain the
stability of this political economy,
increased economic aid is necessary.
Projected gross economic assistance for
fiscal 1972 has risen to $761.5 million
from $585.5 million in 1971. It is no
wonder, therefore, that the Saigon au
thorities were so alarmed at the Senate
"rebellion" against foreign aid in late
1971. It was partly fear of slashed
aid levels which prompted Thieu's
economic reform package announced on
November 15. This package, which was
put together by a group of American
9
trained economists, aims at reducing the
degree of economic dependence on the U.S.
by stimulating export industries and en
couraging foreign investment.
The net exports of South Vietnam
have averaged about $12 million annually
while its imports have reached the $700
million mark. In fact, South Vietnam's
imports of cosmetics and other drug
store items far exceed its total exports.
Until recently, the deficit was made up
partly by the Commercial Import Program's
counterpart funds and partly by foreign
exchange which was generated mainly by
U.S. Government purchase of the piastres
necessary to cover the expenses of U.S.
programs. The income from these piastre
sales has declined as the U.S. military
presence has decreased, and it was to
make up for this that USAID proposed
the Economic Support Fund for fiscal
1972, which was budgeted at $150
million.
The aid program and the new economic
policies are interdependent. A letter
from Sesto Vecchi, President of the
American Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam
(ACCV), reprinted in the ACCV Bulletin
and addressed to the Council Chairman
of the Asian American Chambers of
Commerce Council, states that a termin
ation of U.S. aid would have devastating
effects on the "fragile beginnings being
made by American business here." In fact,
1971 marks the beginning of a period
when private American (and Japanese)
investment is being expected to play
an increasing role in bearing the burden
of supporting the South Vietnamese econ
omy and replacing direct U.S. govern
ment subvention. Ambassador Bunker be
gan his speech to the ACCV on January
20, 1972, by saying that "if the number
of American businessmen increases as
the U.S. mission is drawn down, it will
provide an indication of Vietnam's
eventual return to a more normal social
and economic climate."
Any damage to the aid program would
hamper this transition. As Sesto Vecchi
remarks in ACCV's Bulletin, "it is only
very recently that American business has
begun to think in terms of giving Viet
nam a fair look. Many here have labored
long to achieve this small gain. The
momentum in this favorable direction,
which it has taken so long to develop,
the nascent self-confidence of the
Vietnamese government, and the im
provements in business climate which
this confidence has begun to engender,
will be lost with the elimination of
American aid. It seems to us both a
great shame and a waste that such pro
gress, which is after all the aim of
the aid program, should die aborning."
The ACCV Bulletin also notes that with
out the credits available through the
aid program, companies such as Ford,
American Motors, Singer and Reynolds
will be unable to follow through on
investment projects they have recently
initiated for Vietnam.
The Saigon government has a "bad
record" to live down in its relations
with prospective foreign investors.
According to the Japanese commercial
attache in Saigon, the main fact which
has prevented Japanese business from
making large inputs into South Vietnam
is that of security, although prospective
Japanese investors have also complained
of excessive red tape, bureaucratic de
lays, and frequent changes of GVN policy.
The attache was cautious about pre
diction: "There's a bright future
here maybe, but there's a need for
changes first." He admitted that the
proposed more liberal investment law
would help create "momentum."
American businessmen in Saigon say
that the investment climate has been
"suffocating." The previous investment
law, promulgated in 1963, was "obso
lete" and "lacked appropriate attrac
tion and incentives," particularly when
compared to those of neighboring coun
tries in Southeast Asia. There has
clearly been pressure exerted on the
GVN to ameliorate conditions for foreign
investment, and the U.S. sees Thieu's
economic reform package, particularly
the new investment law, as a major step
in the right direction. In fact, Thieu's
proclamation on the subject reads as
if it had been drafted by the ACCV,
both in terminology and in content.
The impact of the new investment law,
10
I
which is still before the Lower House
for approval, would be, in the opinion
of the U.S. commercial attache in Saigon,
to put South Vietnam pretty much on a
par with other Southeast Asian countries
in terms of encouraging foreign invest
ment. It provides generous terms for
businesses to remit profits abroad, a
guarantee that the government will not
nationalize, and a five-year tax holiday.
If substantial foreign investment arrives
it is likely to be concentrated in two
main areas: (1) in the production and
extraction of primary products, notably
fish and lumber; (2) in the setting up
of assembly plants for light industrial
products such as radios, motor-bikes,
TVs, and the like, the parts for which
are mostly produced abroad. According
to local economic journals, Singer is
interested in setting up a sewing
machine assembly plant and Ford plans
to pool funds with the Vietnamese for
a truck assembly plant. The Japanese
are particularly interested in assembly
plants and have run into some criticism
from Vietnamese who regard this kind of
investment as a disguised import pro
gram. Honda has already encountered
problems in obtaining GVN approval of
an assembly plant using imported parts.
In early 1971, Toyota received per
mission to invest in South Vietnam, but
the conditions of investment proved un
acceptable to them because the GVN
required that an enlarged portion of
components be produced in Vietnam.
In recent months, however, the GVN
has become more "realistic," and the
new investment law is a step in that
dubious direction. Even if the transi
tion from governmental to private in
vestment were to take place in South
Vietnam (a process which ultimately
depends upon the security situation)
it would result in a new kind of eco
nomic dependence and make it impossible
for the Saigon government to build a
balanced and self-sufficient economy.
Weakness of Vietnamization
These U.S. political and economic
strategies, combined with massive mili
tary force, have been powerful and have
achieved a degree of success. PRG
strategists have, for example, recog
nized the threat and partial effective
ness of the rural pacification program
in combination with heavy bombing of
liberated and contested areas. They have
shifted the locus of their efforts to
f
underground political work in the cities.
In a recent policy document dating from
early 1971, they spell out difficulties '!
and map out a strategy which calls for
political consolidation and a scaled-down
level of military activity, with more em
!
phasis on counter-pacification work in
f
preparation for a large offensive in the
future, presumably when American troop
strength has stabilized at a residual
minimum. Recruitment is still difficult
in the rural areas and is hampered in
the urban areas by GVN security measures.
The PRG policy document also stresses
political work in the cities with the
various "struggle movements," notably
those of the students, professionals,
veterans, intellectuals, and Buddhists.
But the politics of people's war has
always been based on the principle that
a temporary disadvantage can be translatec
into victory through utilization of the
inherent weaknesses of the opponent. The
purpose of this article is not to argue
that the U.S.-Thieu side in South Viet
nam is so strong that it will win the
war or will succeed in prolonging a
bloody stalemate indefinitely. We have
tried to encourage a sober appreciation
of the present strengths of the South
Vietnamese regime, many of which have
developed since Tet and the start of the
Vietnamdzation policy. We have also
sought to explain specific events such
as the ludicrously high percentages of
the population who "voted" for Thieu in
October 1971 and the surprisingly low
level of organized militant opposition
activity at the time of the elections.
But the political strategy of Vietnam
ization has several important vulner
abilities and we shall now try to analyze
them and suggest what might happen in
Vietnam during the next year.
The organizations which the GVN
has erected to maintain its rule all
have inner contradictions which can be
turned to the advantage of the PRG.
Many of the GVN's policies, for which
11
great successes or potential is claimed,
create their own conflicts in the process
of implementation. For example, the
much-vaunted Land to the Tiller program
has created desires among ARVN soldiers
who are not on the land to stake claims
and has aroused resentment among land
less laborers who are not included in
the program. Other government policies
are double-edged swords. The Chieu Hoi
program, to cite another example,
provides impressive statistics on
alleged PRG defections, but there is
considerable evidence that the other
side uses this program as a means of
infiltration, of escape from impasses,
and even as R-and-R. Even more often,
the program garners ordinary peasants
who "defect" merely in order to avoid
being arrested, tortured, or shot as
"Vietcong suspects."
Other GVN policies and organizations
have yet to be implemented and their
potential success is thus not yet clear.
For example, although Thieu plans to as
sert control over the "permanent RD
cadre" force to strengthen his pol
itical machine, the history of the RD
cadre program suggests that this will
be difficult to achieve in the face of
opposition from the cadres themselves
and from entrenched local political
forces. The attempt to institutionalize
political commissars in the army has
not gotten very far because of opposi-
tion from suspicious generals and the
lack of a credible ideology to use for
indoctrination.
The key factor is the political
motivational one. In the end, the PRG
will win in South Vietnam because it
is the only political force which
combines effective organization with
durable commitment to a coherent set
of political ideals and programs that
appeal to people's spirits as well
as to their interests. It is impossible
for Thieu to generate a political
elite of dedicated political cadres,
for example, because he has no ideologi
cal alternative to counter that of the
PRG. A nationalist appeal rings ex
ceedingly hollow for Thieu, as do
claims to represent social justice,
public propriety, Vietnamese tradi
tions, or democracy. These appeals
have long since been appropriated by
the other side.
Nor has the Thieu government been
able to generate any affection, confi
dence or popularity, let alone commit
ment, among the general population.
Even though the GVN has been successful
in drawing over some erstwhile militant
opposition leaders to its side, it has
not been able to generate any widespread
popular commitment to a government like
Thieu's or to an artificial entity like
the Republic of South Vietnam.
The primary motivational assumption
of the politics of Vietnamization is the
venality and materialism of the Viet
namese, a premise which is deduced in
part from American ideological assump
tions about the basic venality of man
kind. Behind the rural improvement pro
grams, for example, lies the idea that
if the people are given some property,
they will become capitalistic and con
servative and will withdraw their support
from the PRG. This analysis ignores other
powerful political emotions: war-weari
ness, the great concern among Vietnamese
that their culture is being destroyed
by the continuation of the war and the
American presence, or the strong feel
ings of nationalism which have fueled
Vietnamese politics for over a millen
nium. Nor does the analysis take into
account class hatreds which are endemic
in a society with such visible inequal
ities as South Vietnam, where leprous
beggars inhabit the sidewalks and rich
Vietnamese drive American cars and dine
in expensive French restaurants. Nor
does it consider the widespread revul
sion against the spread of corruption
and the intensified use of coercion.
It is to these emotions, as well as to
an array of concrete interests, that
the PRG directs its appeals.
American officials in Saigon assume
that institutionalized corruption will
help maintain the regime's stability.
But in actuality this may well mean
institutionalized instability since
anyone can "buy into" the sys tem and
acquire a position, while the "incum
bent" must always be looking over his
12
shoulder in the fear that someone else
will outbid him. In the short term,
corruption may help to keep the system
operating because of the large amounts
of American money pouring into the
funnel. But as the American presence de
clines and the size of the pie itself
decreases, competition may become more
severe and instability result. In moti
vational terms, if one is "committed" to
a system only because one is economically
sustained, then if the money decreases,
commitment wavers and new political
options become attractive.
The cornerstone of the South Viet
namese regime is the military and,
according to many accounts, the morale
of the ARVN is low. Vietnamese soldiers
continue to show a greater reluctance to
kill Vietnamese or destroy their own
countryside than do the Americans.
There is resentment in regular ARVN
units against what is seen as American
puppeteering and disregard for Vietnam
ese lives. Pay is low and most ARVN
"grunts" are unwilling draftees. The
exceptions are the mobile units,
such as the higher-paid Airborne and
Rangers, which are mainly composed of
Zumpen elements and adventurers who
prey on the countryside. Local PF and
RF units in many areas resent the in
cursion of such crack mobile units
because it may disturb local "under
standings" with the PRG or turn the
local people against forces
in general.
Local accommodation between PRG
and government local forces is a serious
problem for the GVN. In some cases it
goes beyond accommodation to out-and
out cooperation. In fact, the GVN does
not trust many of the PF units in the
countryside and arranges for them to
be moved around--if they stay in their
home area they can too easily be infil
trated and organized by the PRG. Haking
local forces mobile is, of course, a
complete reversal of their original
function.
GVN and American policies have, more
over, alienated large sections of the
population, whether it be uprooted pea
sants in the refugee camps or harassed
intellectuals and urban middle class
people whose salaries are worth less
and less. One Saigon observer describes
the major sentiment towards the GVN in
South Vietnam's refugee camps as "you
bastards moved us l" Although the GVN
is at present able to prevent this atti
tude from being expressed in any orga
nized way, if the political and military
context should change, the inhabitants
of the refugee camps might well become
politically active.
The cities of South Vietnam are
potential sources of political trouble
for the regime even though political
opposition is only marginally visible
at the present time. The coercive methods
of the Thieu regime may suffice to main
tain stability and contain opposition
temporarily, but they also create a
pool of people who resent the regime and
are thus drawn to PRG politics. The
cities are full of discontent and po
tential unrest.
The growing moderation of the Bud
dhists is partly counterbalanced by changes
within the Catholic community. Whereas
the Catholics used to be a well-organized
minority of 10%, tightly knit to defend
their own interests and overwhelmingly
anti-communist, Catholic politics is now
becoming increasingly anti-Thieu. Disaf
fection and anti-Americanism are on the
rise among Catholic young and old,
left, right, and center. Old conser
vative priests are dismayed at the
decay of morals under the "prosperity"
of the American-aid way of life. The
anger of right-wing and Diemist Catholics
over the American-supported overthrow
of Diem has been rekindled by the Penta
gon papers. Young idealistic Catholics
sickened by the corruption of the pre
sent regime and the waste caused by end
less war are no longer impressed by
their elders' old saws about the horrors
of communism in North Vietnam. "I fought
in Cambodia and Laos," said one 22-year
old Catholic interviewed by the New York
Times' Tom Fox just before the October
election. "My parents support Thieu.
All they can talk about is the way life
was with the communists in North Vietnam
over 15 years ago. But they don't
have to fight like I do. I can never
13
vote for Thieu."
Progressive Catholics are now in the
forefront of the anti-war opposition.
For example, in the Lower House elec
tions in 1971 a Nortern Catholic refu
gee, Tran Tuan Nham, used as his symbol
a drawing of Nixon crossed out with a
heavy swastika accompanied by a PRG
slogan: Chong My Cuu Nuoc [Oppose the
Americans, Save the Country]. Nham was
summarily dragged off to jail. Another
example is Ngo Cong Due, editor of the
major opposition newspaper, Tin Sang,
who was protected for a long time by
the fact that he is a relative of the
archbishop of Saigon, but who has now
been driven to exile in Sweden.
There is more talk of social justice
nowadays among Vietnamese Catholics. In
the context of world Catholicism this
does not seem to be a very radical
stand, but it is significant in Vietnam,
where such talk has been generally con
sidered communist propaganda, and where
the priests' main concern has been build
ing bigger and better churches and
channeling U.S. aid to their faithful.
In short, political trends among
the organized opposition forces are by
no means unidirectional and the political
potential of these forces remains ambi
guous. There are widespread and various
social discontents which may prove po
litically threatening to the Thieu govern
ment. The difficult thing, of course,
is to assess the weights of the different
political forces and to predict how the
general political context might change
in a direction favorable to the PRG.
One point worth stressing is that
the question "How much of the popUlation
supports A and how much B?" is almost
impossible to answer. Of course, a
sizeable proportion of the population
is committed to or supports the PRG in
various ways, and also a fair-sized mi
nority supports Thieu, even if reluctantly
in many cases. But there is a very sub
stantial middle group whose political
position and actions can change accord
ing to context.
Among highly politicized people in
Saigon, for example, bet-hedging and
occupying of middle ground are appa
rent. It is done in many cases through
political mystification, by appearing so
complicated, unpredictable and hard to
pin down that one can avoid being asso
ciated unambiguously with either side
or with any definite political organ
ization. This also gives one the flex
ibility to move in a different direction
in the future. An ambiguous political
stance serves both as a protective de
vice in an uncertain and repressive
political climate and as a way of keep
ing options and avenues open in case of
a political The PRG is fully
aware of these tendencies and part of
its strategy is to create a political
context whereby much of this middle
group can be won over or neutralized.
The process of political dismember
ment and isolation of the Thieu govern
ment will require months, maybe years,
of political campaigning on the PRG
side. The major goals will be (1) to
give those favorable to the PRG, both
inside and outside ARVN, a way to par
ticipate in the PRG cause; (2) to provide
avenues of escape for those on the GVN
side who have no commitment to Thieu.
In mid-January a campaign was launched
by the PRG which concentrates on winning
over people who are standing on the
GVN side. According to a PFG 10 point
appeal first broadcast January 25, any
one on the GVN side who joins them will bl
welcomed, and even people who have commit:
ted "crimes against the people" can be re,
habilitated. To facilitate this campaign,
heavy politico-military pressure will
be exerted on the GVN by actions such
as large-scale attacks on ARVN troops
or small-scale repetitions of the Tet
offensive.
Does the PRG have the strength to
carry out this strategy? From the militar
side, it seems that the NVA, which has
the capacity and the determination to
mount a large offensive, will be pro
viding most of the forces for the mili
tary build-up. But does the PRG have
the capacity to carry out the kind of
political build-up necessary to prove
decisive? In Military Regions (MR) I and
II, the situation has been improving
14
for the PRG/NVA, and they should have a
capability for launching a major mili
tary offensive in this region. There
are recent signs of an improvement in
the PRG military position in the Delta.
The PRG has base areas in the U Minh
forest on the Ca Mau peninsula and in
the provinces of Bac Lieu, Kien Hoa,
and northern Tay Ninh.
The political and economic infra
structure of the PRG, though it has
received many hard knocks from pacifi
cation policies, is still basically
intact in large areas of the Delta and
has maintained strong positions in
MR I and HR II. Certain provinces of
South Vietnam have been Vietminh or
pro-PRG for decades and in spite of
mass murder and population displace
ment (Quang Ngai is the most famous
case) still remain so, with traditional
support reinforced by resentment against
Allied barbarity. In Binh Dinh, for exam
ple, there are an estimated 10-15,000
PRG troops backed by 5,000 NVA regu
lars. According to the GVN's own
sources, the PRG can count on as many
as 300,000 of the province's inhabi
tants for support.
One U.S. official is quoted as
saying that "there is really no differ
ence between the farmers of 1965 and
those here today. They would support
the Vietcong before any Saigon govern
ment with its American tint." In fact,
the situation in central Vietnam is so
serious from the GVN point of view
that there is a great deal of talk in
Saigon, among Americans and Vietnamese,
about "writing off" several of the cen
tral provinces, maybe even the whole
of MR I. A recent program to siphon off
population from Quang Tri and settle
them further south in Phuoc Tuy pro
vince is seen as evidence of American
intentions to jettison the area.
One way of evaluating the continued
strength of the PRG infrastructure is
to look at its financial system. Amer
ican advisors in the Delta claim that
the PRG is collecting more taxes there
than the GVN. According to a fruit far
mer from near Dalat, which is regarded
as a secure area, there were twelve
guerrillas in his village who were "sort
of friends" and looked like everybody
else, to whom he paid an annual tax of
P6,000 per tractor, increased to P12,000
in 1972. His conveyors paid a P3,000
per-truck-per-month "circulation tax."
He said these taxes were very light
and his major complaints were reserved
for GVN military operatIons and defoli
ation which caused him great losses.
His requests for compensation from
the GVN were going unheeded.
One important aspect of a system
based on corruption is its potential
for political neutrality. It is well
known that in some cases of American
transfer of facilities to the ARVN,
equipment and installations have been
sold on the local market. But there
are also cases in which American military
supplies have been sold to the highest
bidder, who happened to be a PRG supply
officer. PRG supply teams come into
Saigon constantly to buy goods; trucks
carrying merchandise bound for the PRG
can avoid detection at road check-points
by paying the prescribed bribe. PRG
financiers have also found a lucrative
new source of revenue, the lumber tax.
Where lumbering areas verge on PRG
zones, a per-tree lumber tax is charged.
The continued capacity to generate re
venue may be one indicator of the con
tinued organizational strength of the
PRG.
Finally, what of the role of Amer
ican aid and the future of the South
Vietnamese economy? In discussing these
problems we enter the realm of practical
relevance to the anti-war movement in
the United States. It is clear that the
continued stability of the Thieu govern
ment and the Republic of South Vietnam
depends on a continued high level of
American economic aid, which is also a
precondition for major U.S. and Japanese
private investment. If the U.S. anti-war
movement could exert effective polit
ical pressure on U.S. aid policy, it
would seriously hamper the political
strategy of Vietnamization. A signifi
cant decrease in the amount of aid
funds to South Vietnam would undermine
many of the institutional pillars of the
Thieu government and would intensify
15
many of the social contradictions dis
cussed above. For example, it would in
tensify opposition in the cities, obstruct
rural "development" plans, threaten the
salaries of bureaucrats and soldiers,
and increase pressure on the GVN to
generate revenue internally by in
creasing taxes.
The attempt to transfer part of the
financial burden to private capital should
also be spotlighted. Many businessmen are
still reluctant to invest in South Viet
nam and need concrete assurances and
guarantees from the U.S. Government. In
a letter from the ACCV to Secretary of
the Treasury Connally, written in Novem
ber 1971, three courses of government
action were requested: (1) The absolute
necessity for a continued high level
of economic aid; (2) The U.S. government
should show confidence in the South
Vietnamese economy by activating the
guarantee program under jurisdiction
of the Overseas Private Investment Cor
poration (OPIC), to facilitate the
"systematic transition from direct
public dollar aid to guaranteed pri
vate inves tment." According to American
economic experts in Saigon, the OPIC
at present does not actually refuse to
guarantee investment in South Vietnam,
but holds that investments must be
considered on a case-by-case basis.
Private business and local U.S. offi
cials would like to see a more open
policy. (3) The U.S. Government should
make development funds available in local
currency to American investors through
programs similar to the Cooley loans
program.
If the U.S. anti-war movement threw
part of its muscle behind a concentrated
campaign on the above issues, it could
both aid in the American withdrawal
from Indochina and have a crippling
effect on the "Vietnamized" political
system which the Americans have helped
to build and hope to maintain. There
will be a continuing need to call for
total withdrawal and the cut-off of
military aid, of course, but the eco
nomic dimension is increasingly impor
tant and should receive greater atten
tion.
Finally, it is significant that a
wave of "new pessimism" is troubling the
minds of many American and Vietnamese
officials in Saigon. The mood began in
late 1971 and is a response to a variety
of problems: ARVN military reverses in
early 1971 in Laos and most recently in
Cambodia; the upsurge in local guerrilla
activity in early 1972; the continued
capacity of the PRG/NVA to mount a major
offensive; the continued inability of
the GVN to eradicate the PRG's political
and economic infrastructure; the deterio
rating situation in MR I and II;, the
recent dramatic decrease in Chieu Hoi
ra1liers; the continuing problems
plaguing the South Vietnamese economy.
In contrast to the optimistic halcyon
days of late 1970 and early 1971,
the U.S.-Thieu skies are now clouding
over.
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16
I
I
\
The WeakDesses of VielDalDDalioD
Ngo Vinh Long
Much stress has been put on the fact
that the United States has been able to
increase Saigon's various armed forces
to over 5 million men, armed with the
most modern and destructive weapons.
From such statistics, most Vietnam
watchers assume that the United States
and the Thieu regime have been able to
"extend" their control into the country
side simply through the sheer numbers of
their forces and that the National Liber
ation Front's "base" has naturally con
tracted as a result.
There is an overwhelming difficulty
with this analysis; it completely ignores
the political nature of the Vietnamese
struggle and tends to emphasize physical
control as the main aim of that struggle.
It blatantly disregards aO-odd years of
struggle against the French colonizers,
during which period Vietnamese from all
walks of life and from all parts of the
country--urban centers and rural areas,
highlands and lowlands alike--came to
gether in the common fight to rid the
country of the French colonizers and the
social ills imposed and perpetuated by
them. The political maturity gained by
the Vietnamese people all through this
period of resistance against the French
and, even more importantly, during the
past 12 years or so in the struggle
against the United States, which not
only helped the French against the Viet
namese people but also has tried ever
since the French left to maintain the
French legacy in Vietnam, is summarily
dismissed by the "base" theory of the
war. The true lesson of the Tet offen
sive has yet to be learned by most
Americans. At that time no Vietnamese
went to the Thieu regime or to the Amer
icans to report the planned attacks;
t
instead, they simply moved quietly away
from the target areas.
It must also be understood that
the U.S. ability to get so many men
into the Saigon army does not in any
way represent success in extending
Saigon's control. The National Liber
ation Front has employed a military
force of only 350,000 men even at the
height of the military struggle. The
problems of logistical support and of
hiding supply lines from U.S. air power
have prevented their recruiting any
more.
With the NLF recruiting minimally in
the countryside, many peasants are
obliged to join GVN armed forces of one
kind or another. Why? First, because
of the fact that about 60% of the crop
land in South Vietnam has been destroyed
by the U.S. anti-crop herbicide program,l
for increasing numbers of peasants there
is no way, no matter how resourceful, to
live off the land if they remain in their
village. Second, because of Thieu's
"General Hobilization" order, any male
who is big and healthy enough to carry
a gun but who is not in a military organ
ization is automatically considered a
draft dodger (if he lives in the cities)
or a "Viet Cong suspect" (if he lives in
the countryside), and could therefore
be severely punished. Hence, while Thieu
does not control the populace, he does
have ways to threaten it. Faced with such
threats, the most logical place for a
Vietnamese male to go is into the Saigon
army. The hope of the U.S.-Thieu Vietnam
izers is that once the soldier is corralled
into the army he can be by
economic as well as physical means. In
fact, the economic means are the most
17
important components of the Vietnamization
scheme because of U.S. assumptions that
an ARVN soldier cannot survive without
U. S. pay.
But is is precisely here that Nixon
and Thieu run into difficulties. Their
design for controlling the ARVN is rid-
dled with economic problems and concomi
tant political side-effects.
First, the increase in the size and
training of ARVN requires an enormous
monetary outlay. According to Colonel
Hoa of the ARVN Department of Logistics,
the average annual military budget has
been 564 billion piasters (about $5 bil
lion officially, at l18p.=$1, or about
$2 billion at the free exchange rate,
275-400p.=$1), instead of 130 billion
piasters, as the public has been led
to be1ieve.
2
So far, this military
spending has been met by U.S. money
pumped in "mostly through the U.S. Army.
But with the withdrawal of more and
more American troops, it will become
increasingly difficult for Nixon to
justify such large expenditures.
Second, the withdrawal of American
troops has also meant a substantial de
crease in American troop-related spend
ing in South Vietnam. Thousands of
Vietnamese who catered to the Americans
have lost their jobs. Besides feeding
unrest, this has meant that the Saigon
government has been able to gather less
in taxes in recent years, leaving taxes
as an even smaller part of its total
revenues than they formerly were. In
1970, for example, direct taxes for the
whole of South Vietnam amounted to only
7.5 billion piasters (officially about
$20 million). 3
Third, the increase in the size of
the ARVN is part and parcel of the policy
to drain the labor force from the coun
tryside, a policy which seriously impairs
the rural economy of South Vietnam.
4
At
the same time that the price of rice in
the I and II Corps areas increases by
leaps and bounds, in many provinces in
the southwestern parts of South Vietnam
rice is left to rot in the fields be
cause there are not enough reapers to
be found. This is so because all able-
bodied men have been press-ganged
into the army, in many areas leaving
behind only old men and women to work
in the paddies.
In their attempt to keep South Viet
nam's faltering economy going, Nixon
and Thieu have been trying frantically
to lure foreign investments into South
Vietnam. Special efforts are made to
woo Japanese investors. For this reason,
newspapers such as Mainichi Daily News
(November 1, 1971) and Japan Times
(March 26, 1972) have been devoting
full pages to advertisements and arti
cles talking up the economic potential
of South Vietnam. Annoying problems of
security and the large number of corrupt
Vietnamese officials demanding bribes
have, however, kept the big Japanese
combines from moving in fast enough to
please Nixon and Thieu. Meanwhile, small
Japanese investors are talking of fl stra
tegic withdrawal."
Thieu Finances Desperate
In a desperate attempt to make ends
meet, the Thieu regime has been forced
to squeeze out extra money from the popu
lation by increasing indirect taxes and
by devaluing the Vietnamese piaster. The
latest example of such squeezes was the
so-called "Autumn Revolution" of November
15, 1971, which drove the prices of most
food items up from 15% to 120%.5 Even
long before the "Autumn Revolution,"
prices of most food items were already
beyond the buying power of most Vietnam
ese. For example, on January 1, 1971,
the Saigon daily Duoc Nha Nam reported
that it cost 4,000 piasters for a dozen
native oranges (as opposed to the more
expensive Sunkist oranges), 1,800 pias
ters for a dozen tangerines, about 400
to 500 piasters for a small grapefruit,
and 500 piasters for a green mango about
the size of one's fist. According to
government statistics cited in the
November 18, 1970 issue of Tin Sang (a
Catholic daily in Saigon), the daily
income of a male worker averaged 108
piasters and that of a female worker
95 piasters. This means that if they
were to buy oranges, each worker
could afford one-quarter of an orange
a day.
18
As for rice, although the government
has tried to keep its price down through
massive imports from the U.S. and Thai
land, native rice like the Nang Huong
type now costs over 12,000 piasters per
100 kilograms, sticky rice costs between
19,000 and 20,000 piasters per 100 kilos,
and even R-8 "miracle rice" which is no
good and is primarily used for making
rice paper now costs 8,000 piasters
per 100 kilos. 6
The basic monthly pay of a private
in the "regular" forces of the ARVN is
only 4,700 piasters. If he is sent across
the borders over to Cambodia or Laos,
then he is given an additional sum of
6,000 piasters per month. If he
to cross the borders, then his family is
presented a "special reward" of 5,000
piasters.
7
But unless a soldier is sent
on expeditionary trips to Cambodia or
Laos, his monthly pay is barely enough
to buy even one person's rice, let
alone rice for the parents, children
and wives whom most soldiers must also
support.
Increased ARVN casualties
While soldiers are paid outrageously
insufficient salaries, the regime is
making them take higher and higher casu
alties through the "mop up" operations
they are forced to carry out. According
to the January 29, 1972 Duoc Nha Nam, an
average of 326 ARVN soldiers were killed
and 824 wounded per week during the pre
vious three months. All this was done
in the name of protecting the "pacifi
cation program" and "the security of
the remaining American troops while .
withdrawing." At this point, many
Vietnamese ask: "Are the foreign troops
fighting to protect us, or are we fight
ing to protect them?"8 The increase in
ARVN casualties is a highly unsettling
factor for the Nixon program.
Vietnamese soldiers further see that
they are being sacrificed not only to
protect the lives of American soldiers
but also to protect the economic interests
of corrupt leaders who are squeezing
them to the bone. Countless ways of
squeezing soldiers' pay have been devised.
First of all, if a soldier does not want
to go on operations or to dangerous
areas, he has to pay a large sum of
money now and then to his commanding
officers, who are usually top brass in
the army. These bribes often constitute
the whole monthly salary of a soldier,
or even more, depending on hie family
financial situation. In order for him to
stay alive, therefore, either his family
has to payor he has to moonlight. The
result is that many men in ARVN are
soldiers in name only. If, when a certain
unit is inspected, the "soldier" happens
to be at work somewhere in the area, he
hurries back to be inspected, for other
wise his superior has to report him
as a deserter. The rate of "desertion"
from ARVN is still given as 20% or above.
Squeeze can be very egalitarian. An
example is the forced contribution of
100 piasters extorted from each soldier
every month to the "Soldiers' Mutual Aid
and Savings Fund." A total of 5 billion
piasters ($12 million) has been taken
for this purpose, although according to
a poll taken by the ARVN high command,
most soldiers are opposed to the policy.9
Not only are the soldiers promised only
10% interest (which has never been paid)
instead of the 21% rate paid by all
banks, but much of the money has been
invested in businesses in which the top
brass own most of the shares. Although
the fund has been in existence for quite
a few years, no disabled veterans,
widows, or orphans have received any
of the benefits.
In fact, corruption is so serious
that it is very difficult for disabled
veterans, widows and orphans to receive
any benefits at all, even from regular
government funds. Combat police and MP's
have been utilized to crack down on dis
abled veterans who demand their benefits.
Young widows and their children have
been wasting their days outside government
offices waiting for their husbands' death
benefits. lO There have been heart-rending
cases of people braving all dangers to
approach Thieu and his wife (chairwoman
of the Association of Women in the Ser
vice of Society) to demand their rightful
benefits only to be dismissed with the
words: "All right, go home!" or "There
are simply too many orphans, it is not
19
possible to provide for them all!"ll
Although the regime has been able to
use the ARVN to carry out destruction
and repression, this situation may soon
backfire. When 5 million men in a country
of fewer than 17 million persons are in
one form of military organization or an
other, almost every soldier has a mem
ber of his immediate family or a close
relative who is a civilian. When one
third of the total population has been
made refugees by the "allied" air and
artillery strikes and when 60% of the
cropland in the country has been de
stroyed by American chemical sprayings,
no soldier can be unaffected. So far,
the regime has been using soldiers
from one locality to destroy another
locality, but the saturation point will
someday be reached and then it will be
much harder to shuffle the soldiers
around. Already most of the Regional
and Popular Forces have made their
peace with the NLF.
Meanwhile, the economic plight of
regular ARVN soldiers has led many of
them to commit armed robberies. Indeed,
armed robbery is so widespread that on
December 20, 1971, most of the newspapers
in Vietnam reported that Major General
Pham Van Phu, commander of the II Corps
Area, ordered his MP's to shoot to kill
any robber even if the alleged robber
is wearing an army uniform. Deputy
Nhu Van Uy of Gia Dinh, a Saigon suburb,
testified on December 22, 1971, that his
district is full of armed robbers and
that they are men with authority, armed
with guns, most of them policemen and
soldiers. The deputy said that if the
situation continues it will not be long
before the robbers will enter the National
Assembly and steal everything owned by
the deputies.
12
Limits of Repression
Repression is a double-edged sword.
Host of the repression in South Vietnam
is being carried out by the police and
the Popular Self-Defense Forces. In the
cities, most of the PSDF people are
street-corner kids from 12 to 16 or 17
years of age who have been given automa
tic weapons and made to feel important
by their ability to repress people and
break up meetings. Repression in the
cities is carried out especially against
students, professors, professionals,
and spiritual leaders, in addition to
workers and disabled veterans.
Most of these people have brothers,
sons and former students ""ho are now
junior officers in the ARVN. Junior
officers are largely from the middle
class or upper-middle class and have
had at least a high school education.
They form the most important element in
the army, since a large and expanding
army relies mostly on its warrant offi
cers, lieutenants, and captains. The re
pression against students, professors,
and professionals only aggravates these
junior officers and creates more insta
bility wi thin the army. Already soldiers
have participated with students in fights
with American MP's in the streets of
Vietnam's major cities. And Saigon news
papers are full of stories of "regular"
soldiers fighting against the PSDF and
the police. Although this is now regarded
as one way of keeping the ARVN in check,
a worsening of the economic situation
plus either increased repression or in
creased NLF military activities may
push the ARVN to react in the most
destructive way against the Thieu regime.
Nixon's Economic Problems
Thus while Nixon hopes to control
the ARVN through economic means, the
economic diffficuities, created in part
by the increase in the size and training
of that army, may make control over it
less and less tenable. And while it is
assumed that Nixon will be able to bring
most of the American troops out of Viet
nam, the economic situation in Vietnam
\vill make it difficult for Nixon to with
draw them beyond a certain level because
of the need to pump aid to the A R \ ~
through the U.S. military. As long as
the war still costs vast sums of money
and Americans still occupy Vietnam,
Nixon will not be able to make it a
"moot issue" wiithin the United States.
Hany people have accorded undue
success to the political strategies of
Vietnamization. They say that the U.S.
20
and Thieu have been able to pacify oppo
sition groups by economic means. An exam
ple frequently cited is the case of the
Buddhist Church, where "pork barrel for
Church projects and bribes to indivi
duals" have made the Buddhist Church less
critical of the Thieu regime. Evidence
of this, according to the theory, is the
fact that in December 1971, for example,
the Buddhist Student Union was not allowed
to attend the An Quang National Congress,
although Ambassador Bunker and Deputy
Ambassador Berger were invited.
These facts are true, but the buying
off of Buddhist and other opposition
leaders, far from increasing Thieu's
strength, only serves to weaken him
more and more. The reason for this is
that while the United States and Thieu
have been able to buy off a number of
top leaders, in doing so they create
severe cleavages between these leaders
and their followers. In the case of the
Buddhist Church, for example, it is per
fectly clear to everybody that the leaders
have been bought off. This creates tre
mendous reaction not only among Buddhist
laymen but also among the whole popu
lation. On December 16, 1971, the Saigon
daily Dan Chu MOi reported that the
Buddhist leaders are completely isolated
from their followers, that they live in
air-conditioned homes, drive around in
shiny cars, and enrich themselves in
many ways. The Venerable Thich Thien
Minh himself has admitted that he is
only a "flower pot" and that all powers
of the Church are in the hands of the
Venerable Giac Duc, an American-trained
monk who is supposed to be Minh's de
puty.13 Minh's confession, coupled with
his dissolution of the Buddhist Student
Association on the grounds that it is
"leftist," has only served to aggravate
the already deep cleavage within the
Church.
Buddhist students have stepped up
their opposition to the Church leader
ship as well as to the Thieu regime.
The typical reaction from the Thieu
government has been to arrest and torture
the dissenting students. Instead of
quelling the opposition, however, Thieu's
repression ~ 2 l y gives the opposition
more depth.
Vietnamization is a foreign-directed,
massively financed and multi-faceted
coercive program. But the blunders of
its design, which are based on gross
misestimations of the Vietnamese people,
not only leave it miles from creating
any kind of stable society, but actually
give it the very opposite effect of
creating a top-heavy, isolated, unstable,
and vastly unpopular regime.
FOOTNOTES
1. According to Deputy Tran Van Qua,
Chairman of the Committee on Agriculture
at the Saigon Lower House. Tin Sang,
November 12, 1970.
2. Duoc Nha Nam, December 11, 1971.
3. Dan Chu MOi, November 17, 1971.
4. Dan Chu Moi, January 25, 1972.
5. According to Father Nguyen Quang
Lam, an ultra-conservative and pro-U.S.
Catholic priest. Tin Sang Hai Ngoai,
December 9, 1971.
6. Duoc rUta Nam, December 11, 1971.
7. Tin Sang, December 11, 1971.
8. Tin Sang, February 11, 1971.
9. Duoc Nha Nam, December 12, 1971.
10. Tin Sang, October 22, 1971.
11. Tin Sang, November 12 and 15, 1971.
12. Dan Chu Moi, December 23, 1971.
13. Dan Chu MOi, December 23, 1971.
14. On March 8, 1972, the Japanese
newspaper Mainichi Daily News reported
that 30 peace groups in South Vietnam
have denounced the Thieu regime's re
pression and that students in H ~ are
continuing to go on strike.
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21
Repol1 on Japan 1972
Herbert P. Bix
[PART ONE: THE MILITARY DIMENSION]
1. The Mystification of the Military Budget
Nothing has more mystified discus
sions of Japanese military development
than the innumerable simplistic conclusions
drawn from percentage comparisons with
Gross National Product (GNP) or with in
ternational levels of military spending.
This is seriously misleading from two
broad angles: (1) the actual size and
growth of the military and the hidden
expenses of the military budget; (2) the
key role that Japan's defense expendi
tures play in supporting American im
perialism in Asia.
Although Japan's annual defense
costs are slightly less than one per
cent of its GNP, since 1967 it has had
the seventh strongest all-round military
establishment in the world, the third
most powerful navy and air force in
the Pacific after those of the United
States and the Soviet Union (Japan's
armed forces, though comparatively
small, are heavily over-officered and
hence capable of rapid expansion), and
an industrial structure which is both
technologically prepared for nuclear
weapons development and self-sufficient
in the manufacture of most, though not
all, conventional weapons. The Defense
Agency, like the Pentagon, emphasizes
machines over manpower but it spends
far less than the Pentagon on personnel
cos ts.
Japan's defense spending, moreover,
is increasing at an astounding rate.
Whereas one could dismiss this phenomenon
in the sixties by saying that the country
with the world's fastest-growing economy
could hardly avoid having the world's
fastest growing military budget, that
argument will no longer suffice in the
seventies as Japan goes on increasing
its military spending at a rate far in
excess of its projected annual growth
rate. Projected defense outlays alone
suggest that Japan is entering a new
stage of militarization. Having devel
oped its armed forces at a rapid pace
through three consecutive five-year plans
(1956-71), at the end of the third plan
Japan suddenly stepped up its defense
spending--by 15.1% for 1970 and 17.8%
for 1971.
In April 1972 Japan officially
launched a fourth five-year defense
build-up. Although originally set at
$16.7 billion, the total cost of the
fourth plan was later reduced to $14.5
billion because of Diet opposition plus
budgetary difficulties in the wake of
the Nixon economic and diplomatic
"shocks" and the upward revaluation of
the yen.
l
Even after this reduction,
however, the fourth plan represented
a 2.2-fold cost increase over the pre
vious five-year plan. A fifth five-year
plan, scheduled to begin in f i s ~ a l
1977, is expected to climb above $33
billion--more than double the cost of
the fourth. 2 Japan's defense spending
increased at an average annual rate of
14.5% under the third plan. During
the next five years, its projected annual
increase may reach as high as 19 or 20%.3
Although these figures suggest the
tempo and magnitude of Japan's military
expenditures, they mask crucial features
of the military budget. Allocated annu
22
ally in accordance with a five-year plan,
the bulk of defense expenses are accounted
for by items of predetermined cost. Con
sequently, defense outlays are carried
over from year to year under such rubrics
as "continuing expenses" and "national
treasury debt liability transactions"
[kokko saimu futan koi], making it diffi
cult to grasp the substance of the de
fense budget in any single year, and
thus impeding Diet control over the
mi1itary.4 A close look at the 1971
defense budget discloses that production
of components for F-4E Phantom jets
and tanks scheduled under the fourth
plan has already commenced. Similarly,
items of sophisticated technology schedu
led for the fifth plan will go into pro
duction years before that plan's offi
cial commencement.
Another reason why Japan's defense
spending appears unrealistically small
lies in the misleading dichotomy between
"defense spending" and "non-defense
spending." The Japanese military budget
fails to include economic "aid" to other
Asian nations, though such aid serves
military as well as economic functions.
Japan's economic "aid" for South Korea's
Pohang Steel Works, for example, is de
signed to equip the armed forces of the
Park dictatorship with an industrial
capacity either for mercenary operations
in other Asian theaters or for waging
"limited" warfare against North Korea.
In so far as such aid works to integrate
South Korea into Japan's military sphere,
it should also be placed under the cate
gory of "defense spending." Similarly,
in Cambodia and South Vietnam, Japanese
"economic aid" helps keep alive the
mercenary Lon Nol dictatorship and the
Saigon generals, thereby furthering
American controls over Indochina and
Japanese participation in the economic
exploitation of the region. Any dis
cussion of Japan's defense spending
therefore must make clear that "defense"
is usually employed in the narrowest
sense, that is, as an official statis
tical category designed to obscure pub
lic discussion of the real state of
affairs. 5 If Japan's military estab
lishment is to be judged realistically,
it must be judged in terms of its abil
ity to reach certain objectives, not
I
solely in terms of its GNP.
I
From this perspective an under
standing of the political goals of
l
,
Japan's leaders in the 1970s is
crucial. Politically, they hope to assume
a gradually increasing share of Amer
ica's policing "burdens" in Asia. Since
I
1969 they have not hesitated to express
that hope in official statements such
as the Nixon-Sato Joint of
November 21, 1969, which linked Japan's
security to the defense of the oppres
sive dictatorships in Taiwan and South
Korea. The U.S.-Japan Treaty on Okinawa,
signed on June 17, 1971, incorporated
a reference to the joint communique in
its thereby giving it a treaty
like status. Even more light on Japan's
military strategy is shed by two other
documents--the October 1970 White Paper
on Defense and the Fourth Defense Plan
draft of April 1971. These not only pro
vide a clearer picture of Japan's emerg
ing militarism but also set the stage
for considering the phenomenon as one
internal to Japanese society.
II. The Fourth Draft Plan
On April 27, 1971, the Defense
Agency formally announced to the nation
its final "draft" version of the fourth
five-year defense plan without having
obtained prior, explicit National Defense
Council approval, as was done with the
first three defense plans. Never be
fore had Agency signalled so
openly its impatience with the nation's
top civilian economic and military
planners. Never before had it so high
handedly ignored the postwar practice
of publicizing the five-year plan only
after securing final approval from the
cabinet's National Defense Council-
the nation's highest organ for deter
mining overall defense policy. By its
April 27 announcement the Defense Agency
breached an important informal mechanism
of civilian control. It also exacer
bated a bitter internal feud with the
chief secretary of the National Defense
CounCil, Kaihara Osamu. In the eight
months following the April 27 announce
ment, while details of the fourth plan
were being intensely debated within the
bureaucracy, the Defense Agency experi
23
enced four changes in director-generals:
Nakasone Yasuhiro, Masuhara Keikichi,
Nishimura Naomi, and the current Ezaki
Masumi.7 But if the manner of the fourth
plan's announcement and the stormy pro
cess of securing its final approval
were both unprecedented, no less signifi
cant were the contents of the plan it
self.
In one fundamental respect the new
plan represented a qualitative leap be
yond previous defense plans: in accor
dance with the Sato--Nixon Joint Connnuni
que, it publicly advanced Japan's de
fense perimeter from its own shoreline,
as delineated in the third plan, to
somewhere on the high seas. TIle new plan's
naval orientation is seen in a building
schedule that calls for 86 new ships,
totaling 103,000 tons, so that by the
end of fiscal 1976 the Japanese navy \vill
have 220 ships totaling 247,000 tons,
plus a naval air component of 350 planes. 8
(By 1981 the total tonnage may even reach
350,000 tons--125,000 tons less than the
1972 size of the Soviet navy.) This is
equivalent to building in just five
years an amount equal to the total ton
nage constructed for the Japanese navy
over the past nineteen.
9
This enormously
expanded navy will be equipped for the
first time with offensive weapons:
ship-to-ship missiles. 10 And since the
chief conceptual innovation of the fourth
plan is air as well as sea control in
areas around Japan, by 1976 the Japanese
air force will gain six squadrons of
F-4E Phantom fighters, totaling 158
planes, and its total size will be
consolidated at around 920 planes.
In other respects the fourth plan
is a continuation of past policies:
it simultaneously increases home pro
duction of military hardware and fosters
continued Japanese dependency on the u.S.
through heavy reliance on licensed pro
duction of American weapons. The most
important components of Japan's new
Phantom fighters, the engines and gun
control systems, will be manufactured
in the u.S. according to American
specifications and imported by Japan.
Altogether, Japan may purchase "between
$800 million and $1 billion worth of
24
assembled military hardware and parts from
the U. S." as part of the fourth plan .11
And where America spends 20% of its
annual budget on research and development
(R & D), Japan intends to spend only
3.3% of the fourth plan's total cost,
or about 180 billion (about $500 million)
over the next five years on 120 items
of military R&D. Although this figure
represents 3.8 times more than what was
allocated for R&D under the third plan,
it is nevertheless almost inconsequen
tial compared to American levels of R&D
spending.
12
On R&D for the ABM program
alone, for example, the Pentagon plans
to spend, by conservative estimate, about
$2.4 billion from 1970 through 1975,13
or almost five times what Japan has pro
grammed for all military R&D under
the fourth plan.
On the other hand, in military R&D
the state foots the bill for the develop
ment of advanced technology by so-called
private industry. The AEW system (air
borne early warning), ship-to-ship and
air-to-ship missiles, electronic in
struments and aircraft components that
are scheduled for development under the
fourth plan are of inestimable value to
private industry. Private firms engaged
in such defense production coopt state
owned resources and funds in order to
strengthen their overall monopoly posi
tion within a given market. Conversely,
the capability that private industries
acquire in producing almost any sophis
ticated technology has wide application
to all phases of defense production.
Thus in Japan a small "defense" sector
is greatly reinforced by a much larger
"non-defense" sector. In the 1970s
Japan expects to spend the enormous sum
of 5,000 billion ($14 billion) on non
military R & D,14 with significant im
pact on military technology anticipated.
It is this fact that suggests that
Japan's military-industrial complex
might in the 1980s become able to dis
engage from America's. Yet in considering
the billions earmarked for hardware pro
curement under the fourth plan, one must
again stress that it will not only re
inforce the oligarchic trend in Japan's
own defense industry, but, equally im
portant in the short run, it will bind
Japanese defense industry tighter to
its American progenitor. The fourth
plan's procurement priorities ensure
that Japan's military-industrial com
plex will continue to be integrally
linked to America's, at least through
the seventies.
What, then, can be said about the
direction in which Japan's military
planners are moving? First, the Japanese
government has thus far failed to evolve
a clear-cut national defense policy, let
alone decide whether the Soviet Union
or China is its primary hypothetical
enemy. Yet postponing these decisions
has not dissuaded it in the least from
planning a vast military procurement pro
gram which envisions:
*Retaining the U.S.-Japan Security
Treaty while transforming the Self Defense
Forces into an independent strategic
unit within the American alliance system.
*Building an air force and a navy
capable of maintaining air and sea su
premacy within Japan's defense perimeter-
defined variously since April 1971 as
including at the least, everything within
an area of 1,000 nautical miles from
Tokyo to, at most, the seas as far south
as Indonesia.
*Building a capital-intensive army
of 13 divisions (180,000 first-line
troops and 60,000 reserves) with over
whelming fire-power capacity and heli
copter mobility, capable of being sent
overseas on short notice to fight
"limited wars." Since, however, the
goal of a l3-division army was deter
mined originally by domestic and inter
national conditions obtaining in the
early 1950s, demands that it be revised
upward are now becoming quite frequent
within the GSDF (Ground Self Defense
Forces).15
*Lastly, it may be conjectured that
in the decade ahead the Defense Agency
will, at the least, retain its nuclear
options by investigating the possibility
of constructing nuclear powered sub
marines and nuclear warheads for its
missiles. The U.S., however, will oppose
a major Japanese effort along these lines
i
because its goal has always been to en
\
courage a dependent military growth in
Japan.
I
In any case, by the early 1980s,
having completed its fifth five-year
1
build-up plan, Japan's armed forces will
be able to assume an outward, offensive
t
mission of policing Pacific Asia. The
fourth defense plan, in short, explodes
the fiction that Japan's primary defense
concern is preventing large-scale internal
disorders and ensuring the security of
the home islands. Indeed, the very dis
I
tinction between defensive and offensive
military forces will become meaningless
once the fourth plan furnishes Japan
with Nike-Hercules missiles which can
carry nuclear warheads and F-4E Phantom
fighters capable of bombing deep into
North Korea, China and the Soviet
Far East.
III. The Defense White Paper
The 1970 White Paper (entitled
Japan's Defense)16 must be viewed against
this background of--in its own terms-
no real defense policy yet enormous
military procurement plans, of armed
forces imbued with a defensive strate
gic mission yet rapidly being transformed
by technological faits accompZis into
offensive fighting forces. Its under
lying theme was not "defense" but patri
otism and the need for a new national
consensus supportive of the military.
Its credibility, however, was marred by
certain contradictions which followed
in its wake or were implicit in it.
Twice the White Paper asserted emphati
cally that "so-called overseas dispatch
of forces will not be carried out. "17
Yet during 1971 the Defense Agency hired
300 "civilian" ferry boats for field
exercises designed to transport tanks
and troops to South Korea; signed an
agreement to "exchange military experi
ences" with Indonesia's armed forces,
which will entail dispatching Japanese
military instructors to that country;
and entered into a separate "arrange
ment" with the Pentagon on the future
deployment of about 6,800 Japanese
military personnel to Okinawa by the
summer of 1973.
18
Or again: despite
repeated assertions that the Self
25
Defense Forces exist strictly for "defen
sive defense," the authors of the White
Paper could not'avoid analyzing inter
national problems in terms of a deter
rence concept which, by definition, pre
supposed deployed forces "to prevent
foreign threats and aggression in ad
vance. 1:19 Obviously, this would clearly
violate their basic principle of "adher
ing strictly and exclusively to defense."
And yet, external and internal contra
dictions notwithstanding, the White Paper
is an amazingly candid document which
confronts a fundamental weakness of the
Self Defense Forces: their lack of credi
bility in Japanese and foreign eyes. For
that situation to change, for the De
fense Forces to become an effective de
terrent, the Japanese people as a whole
and not just the most oppressed strata
of Japanese society--the sons of farmers,
small merchants and small businessmen-
must be willing to fight and die for the
state. And that they are still not pre
pared to do. Though lavishly supplied
with the most sophisticated equipment,
Japan's armed forces have never been
able to meet their full enlistment quo
tas, except at the time of their initial
postwar organization. Even in 1971, when
the air force, most prestigious of the
services, had achieved 97% of its al
lotted manpower and the navy 96.5%,
the army still had only 87.4%, leaving
all of its front-line divisions almost
25% undermanned.
20
According to the
White Paper, this recruitment problem
"is becoming more and more difficult,
day by day." making improvement in
society's treatment of the military
man "the most urgent task. "21 In this
respect, the real obstacle to Japanese
militarism is certainly not the Securi
ty Treaty with the U.S., which more
than anything else facilitated Japan's
rearmament. It is the Japanese people
themselves, enough of whom, unlike Amer
icans, refuse to forget the misery and
destruction of war because they experi
enced it directly.22
Hence the White Paper's stress on
patriotism, public opinion and educa
tion. Hence also its state
ment that only a "True patriotism" or
"the ardor to give one's life for the
defense of the nation " will suffice.
"Just loving peace and loving the coun
try" is not enough. 23
Finally, on the occasion of the sUb
mission of the fourth draft plan to the
cabinet, Prime Minister Sato is alleged
to have remarked about the need to har
monize the strengthening of national
defense with future educational pol
icy.24 But when it comes to the nature
of the elite consensus on national de
fense, neither the White Paper nor the
fourth defense plan offers any unambi
guous conclusions. For that, one must
examine the subtle shift in SDF pro
paganda and recruit indoctrination that
first began in the wake of the 1960
struggle against the U.S.-Japan Security
Treaty [Aropo] and is continuing today.
IV. The SDF and the New Patriotism
Reestablished covertly and illegally
in a repetition of the Weimar military's
historic birth
25
and never having en
joyed widespread popular support, Japan's
postwar military in addition have suf
fered the contradiction of a "citizens'"
army whose primary mission was the
counter-revolutionary one of suppressing
other citizens. At the root of its dilemma
is a constitution that denies the exis
tence of the military in theory while
accepting it in practice.
26
Where the
armies of Weimar and Imperial Japan of
the thirties stressed their ideological
distance from society and the superi
ority of soldier and sailor to ordinary
citizen, the army of democratic Japan
must, in contrast, insist on its "civi
lian control," essential oneness with
society and public service nature. It
is in the context of this specific legal
dilemma that the implications of recent
transformations in SDF ideology should
be understood. They should also be grasped
as one part of an exceedingly broad
push toward a new patriotism which
emerged in all areas of Japanese life
during the 1960s.
From 1950, when the "National Police
Reserve" was first established by Gen
eral MacArthur, to 1960, Japanese mili
tary indoctrination consisted almost
entirely of straightforward anti-commu
26
nism. Then came the 1960 mass struggles National Rural Police and the first
to prevent renewal of the U.S.-Japan
Security Treaty. Although led by the
left and participated in by a wide
assortment of groups, for the GSDF this
provided the first real test of their
anti-communism. In June, at the height
of the crisis, a group of ruling Liberal
Democratic Party leaders asked Defense
Agency Director-General Akagi Munenori
if he would use Ground Self Defense
Forces to protect the Diet and execu
tive buildings from invasion by demon
strators and rioters.
27
Akagi refused-
not only because it might have "damaged
the image of the 'people's Self Defense
Forces' ,"28 but, what is more likely,
because he estimated correctly that the
troops could not be relied upon to crush
the people, who, whatever their political
coloration, were still Japanese. A de
cade of anti-communism indoctrination
had not been enough to turn them into
American-style "professionals" ready
to kill on orders any officially desig
nated enemy, whether unarmed man, woman
or child, and think they were "just
doing their job."
In the 1960s the veteran ex-Imperial
officers of the SDF, sensitized by this
incident to the ideological problem,
began gropingly to relate to two new
trends in Japanese society. One was the
increased activism of the ultranational
ist right which had first emerged in the
1950s. Not only did business and govern
ment circles begin to lend support to
old rightists in the wake of the pop
ular, left-led demonstrations of 1960,
but new forms of right-wing activity
emerged, such as private "guardsmen
companies" which were used, with tacit
state support, against striking workers
and s t uden tact i vis ts. The fi rs t "guards
men company," the Nihon Keibi Hosho Kabu
shiki Kaisha, was formed in Tokyo in
1963; the second, Keibi
which is now the largest with 6,500
guardsmen, was established in 1965.
Between 1965 and 1970 the number of
such companies increased from 155 to
310, and the number of guardsmen to
nearly 26,000 in October 1970. Sago
Keibi's president, Murai Jun, "was
formerly head of the Police Guard
Section of the Headquarters of the
director of the Cabinet Investigation
,
Office--the Japanese CIA. Its advisor,
Yoshio Miwa, was formerly the deputy I
director-general of the Defense Agency.
l
Most of the chiefs of the company are
also of police and secret agent ori
gin. "29 Paralleling the growth of
guardsmen companies was an increase in
right-wing political organizations which
numbered 400 with an estimated 120,000
members by 1970.
30
In the 1960s, as the new "old right"
grew, SDF officers began inviting noted
rightists to the training camps. Taka
Kon, Liberal Democratic Party dietman
and popular novelist, told the men of
the Self Defense Forces at a lecture,
"Your mission is to kill; that's not
murder. You just kill them; it's all
right and it's legal. The state takes
responsibility for what you do, so
never mind, you can kill with a clear
conscience anyone who is not of the
Japanese nation. "31 In the spring of
1968 right-wing novelist Mishima Yukio
was welcomed by high-ranking officers
of the GSDF's Fuji Training School
"and given special training for forty
five days as a special soldier ... On
the basis of what he had learned he
organized his own private army, Tate
no kai [Shield Society], made up mainly
of students. The SDF provided special
training for the group, a concentrated
officers' course in 'tactics' at the
Fuji Training Camp, by a special arrange
ment with the GSDF chief. "32
The SDF was also at the center of
the great debate on Japan's recent im
perial past which began with the Shawa
History Deb ate of 1955-57. Under the
government's sponsorship of the Meiji
Centennial celebrations during the six
ties, the debate affected the national
consciousness of Japanese in all walks
of life.
33
Part of the new historical
awareness was a healthy reaction to the
self-hatred that American officials
deliberately inculcated during the occu
pation period, but another part spilled
over into recruit indoctrination as a
supplement to stepped-up anti-communist
indoctrination.
27
In March 1963 an SDF Research Associ
ation was es tablished to prepare "spiri
tual education" materials for the troops,
including war movies and his torical
materials. In 1964 the Defense Agency
began to encourage establishment of
local historical museums to house the
records of Pacific War veterans. 34 Soon
it was producing its own full-length
color films for in-service viewing as
well as to propagandize the public.
In March 1967, Shochiku, a leading
film company, issued the SDF-made movie
"The Japan-U.S. Security Treaty System"
under its own ti tIe of "The Wonders of
Science--Hissiles Fly the Heavens" [Ka
gaku no kyoi--misairu ozora 0 tobu].
That same year the Pentagon returned
to the Defense Agency hundreds of war
movies that had been confiscated during
the Occupation. In 1968 Japan's leading
cinema companies released them uncut to
the public, touching off a tremendous re
vival of interest in war movies. Of
course, the Defense Agency alone was
not responsible for abetting the war
movie boom of the late sixties and early
seventies. Part of the credit is due
its number one defense contractor--the
Mitsubishi monopoly group. In the late
1960s Mitsubishi gained control of
Japan's leading film making companies.
Hitsubishi Realty took over Nikkatsu
Cinema; and JASCO, the Mitsubishi super
market chain, tied up with the famous
TOh5 Cinema. It was thus not entirely
by accident that the new war movies
beautified Japan's past wars of
aggres s ion. 35
But try as it might to raise in
service morale, improve its public
image, and win support for militarism,
when faced with the fundamental problem
of its foreign and domestic credibility
as an army in need of constitutional
protection the Self Defense Forces, in
Mishima's apt words, "remained as silent
as a canary deprived of its song. "36
Nevertheless, by the end of the decade,
at least some SDF officers were thinking
of solving that problem by resurrecting
the still-intact symbol of the emperor,
the bushido spirit, and the notion of
a state grounded in mythology. It is
still too early to determine what
effects Mishima's dramatic suicide at
Ichigaya, on November 25, 1970, will
have on the SDF. The SDF troops, it is
true, certainly gave him a poor recep
tion at the time. But the nostalgia
that calls for at least partial restora
tion of the intact emperor symbol has
been strengthened by his act and cannot
be overlooked. The harking back to
Japan's mythological origins is exem
plified best by General Tsukamoto
Hasatoshi's talk to the men when he
was "special curriculum chief" of the
Fuji Training School. As he observed
while lecturing on "A General View of
Japanese History and National Polity,"
Mythology is mythology; nations
rise and fall; but why is it that
the emperor system has endured for
2,600 years?
*Comparison with world history: the
United States is only 200 years
old; the Soviet Union is only 30.
Wit l they be able to exist as a
unified state [like us] for 2,600
years?
*Imperial Household-State-People
are three heads on one bodY. His
Majesty the emperor BANZAI!
Japan BANZAI! the Japanese people
BANZAI! 37
Nostalgia for Japan's ancient "way of
the samurai" is suggested by the empha
sis on "fostering morality" which is to
be fotmd in the "Self Defense Force
Servicemen's Regulations." But it is
evidenced most strikingly in certain
textbooks for lower-rank officers,
in which patriotism is defined as follows:
Loyalt;y is a feeling peauliar to
us Japanese since ancient times.
We have been trained in the so
caZZed spirit of bushidD (origi
nally: 'the way of the samurai'
--the peauliar morality of Jap
anese military men of the middZe
ages). Thanks to the Meiji Restora
tion, the state was unified, and
since the emperor became the center
of the state, the feeling of
loyal t;y to the way of the warrior
became patriotism. We love the
state as our highest principle
and have come to regard dYing
28
for the sake of the state as the
highest honor. Precisely this
patriotism is the motive force
for the development of the state.
38
Three conclusions can be drawn from
the preceding discussion: First, the
Self Defense Forces remain, as they were
created, a subordinate military estab
lishment designed to serve American in
terests in the Pacific. One hundred
twenty-six American bases and 28,000
American servicemen still in Japan,
plus another 35,000 on Okinawa, sym
bolically reinforce their sense of
subordination to America. In equipment
procurement, in operational planning
such as the Three Arrows "map exer
cise" and in joint deployment exer
cises with South Korean naval forces,
the SDF is a loyal cog of the Pentagon.
Whether they desire rapid or gradual
expansion, revival of the emperor symbol
or partial revision of the constitution,
SDF officers, generally speaking, have
a dependent consciousness: nearly all
envision continued reliance on American
military power. So strong is this re
liance on America that it may itself
be regarded as a characteristic of
Japan's new militarism.
Second, the SDF is an extremely
frustrated military, led by former Im
perial Army and Navy officers who enjoy
the support of conservative business and
government leaders who were themselves
former Imperial officers. It is also a
military establishment that finds it
increasingly difficult to tolerate a
constitution that denies its legiti
macy, an imposed and alien principle of
civilian control and, worst of all, a
government that perpetuates its strate
gic aimlessness by refUSing to give
it a clearly defined defense policy.
The accumulated frustrations of the
uniformed SDF officer corps and
their friction with Finance Ministrv
and MITI officials as well as with
civilian defense planners may soon be
come factors to be reckoned with in
Japanese politics.
Third, by "gradually weaning the
public away from little-Japanism, "39
by launching successive military con
solidation plans that make Japan a
"military big power," Japan's conserva
tive leaders deliberately increase the
likelihood that these mutually reinforcing
developments will precipitate conditions
for a revision of the constitution and,
ultimately, a "breakthrough to a new
state structure."40 Once that occurs,
the internal position and status of
both military and emperor in Japanese
life are sure to be greatly enhanced:
the emperor, or rather the imperial
institution, because it has always been
used by those in power, as a last resort,
to forge consensus on foreign policy and
to foster identity between state and
society; the military because it can only
exist for itself when it appears to be
defending the values of the Japanese
people, values which the living emperor
has historically personified.
And yet, it must be said that restora
tion of these two components to more
traditional roles will by no means
signal a return to the prewar polity.
In postwar democratic Japan, the main
stream conception of the national destiny
and of how the individual should relate
to society and to the military is not
being shaped by an ultranationalist
military elite advantageously positioned
within the state structure, hostile to
democratic rhetoric, and anti-Western in
orientation, but by businessmen and tech
nocrats committed to the ideology of
Japanese-style democracy and acting in
response to their perception of the needs
of the national economy. If conserva
tive politiCians, military officers and
an increasing number of university in
tellectuals desire a quantum leap in
military strength, so too do the leaders
of big business, and they are the prime
movers in the Japanese polity. In order
to understand the causes of Japan's new
militarism, as well as its recent burst
of overseas economic expansion, one must
turn to the problems of her business
leaders and to the study of her postwar
economic history. For it is precisely in
Japan that one sees best how advanced
monopoly capitalism generates the inter
related evils of budding militarism and
economic imperialism.
[Part TWo, dealing with Japan's economic
29
development in the postwar period, will
be published in a subsequent Bulletin.]
FOOTNOTES
1. International Defense Review, Vol.
4, No.6 (December 1971), 522.
2. The Oriental Economist (April
1970), 13. The Defense Production Com
mittee of Keidanren (Federation of
Economic Organizations) earlier esti
mated a smaller budget for the fifth
defense program: $22.2 billion or
8,000 b i11ion. See Goto 110too , "Japan
in As ia," Japan Quarterly, Vol. XVI,
No. 4 (October-December 1969), 39l.
3. Nihon Keizai, April 28, 1971,
24; Kazushige Hirazawa, "Japan's Future
World Role and Japanese-American Rela
tions," Orbis, Vol. XV, No. 1 (Spring
1971), 339.
4. Sekiya Reij i, "Seiikika suru boei
yosan" [The Sacredization of the Defense
Budget], Ekonomisuto (June 1, 1971), 28.
5. Sekiya Reiji, 27-28.
6. The preamble of the Okinawa
Restoration Treaty reads as follows:
Japan and the United States of
Ameriaa" Noting that the Prime
Minis tel' of Japan and the Pl'esi
dent of the United States . l'e
vie<Jed togethel' on NoverrUJel' 19"
20 and 21" 1969" the status of
the Ryuku Is tands and the Dai to
Is lands, l'efel'l'ed to as 'OkinCfJJ)a'
in the joint communique between
the Prime Minis tel' and the Pl'es
ident issued on Novembel' 21,
1969, and agl'eed that the GOvel'n
ment of Japan and the Govel'n
ment of the United States .
should entel' immediately into
consultations l'egQl'ding the
specific Ql'l'angements fol' aa
complishing the eQl'ly l'evel'
sion of these islands to Japan.
Reprinted in Current History, Vol. 61,
No. 364 (December 1971), 359.
7. Noguchi Yuichiro, "Kitaisareru
gunji taikokuzo" [The Image of a Mili
tary Big Power Which is being Enter
tained], Ekonomisuto (JUne 1, 1971),
16-17; Kawada Kan, "Teichaku suru san
gun fukugotaisei" [The Stabilized
Military-Industrial Complex], Ekono
misuto (February 22, 1972), 15; Asahi
janaru (January 14, 1972), 110.
The growing estrangement between
uniformed officers of the Self Defense
Forces and civilian officials Who work
in the central headquarters of the
Defense Agency was illuminated several
years ago by military critic Horie Yoshi
taka. Interviewed in 1965 by an American
military historian, Horie observed
that the civilian officials were
mel'ely on tempol'ar-y assignment
othel' Ministries--Finanae"
FOl'estl'Y and AgnoultUl'e" Con
struation" Tl'anspol'tation" eta.
They tend to evinae
favol'itism tOhlal'd theil' pal'ent
Ministries, and to display negli
gible enthusiasm fol' theil' JSDF
duties .... As a l'esult, it is
diffiautt fol' them to wOl'k effeo
tivety with the pel'son
net" 01' to aaaomplish intensive
stucbJ of miZitar-y mattel'8. Sinae
most of these aivitians al'B
Tokyo Univel'sity graduates, they
may be ab te to eliait the suppol't
of the Cabinet 01' of Val'iOUB Minis
tries. In some instanaes" theil'
ignol'anae of militQl'y affail's
al'ises 01'
hostility tOhlal'd men in uni
fom .. I have :t'eaently heal'd
it said that the Defense College
CommandEl' ought to be a soldiel',
not a aivilian--as is the aase at
West Point and elsewhel'e.
Source: "Japan's Self Defense Force
Today--Yoshitaka Horie Interviewed by
Dr. Alvin D. Coox," in Marine Corps
Gazette, Vol. 49, No. 2 (February
1965),53.
8. The full text of the final draft
of the Fourth Defense Power Consolida
tion Plan is printed in the Mainichi
Shimbun, April 28, 1971. See American
Embassy, Tokyo, Political Section,
Translation Services Branch--Daily
Summary of the Japanese Press, April
29-30, 1971, 21-26.
9. Noguchi Yuichiro, 18.
10. On this point see Armed Forces
Journal, November 1971, where it is
30
pointed out (p. 28) that:
A Japanese naval mission is touring
the the
FT'ance and Italy looking foT' suit
able missiles with which to arm
the Japanese MaT'itime Self Defense
FOT'ce ... Japan is also developing
heT' own ship-to-ship and aiT'-to
ship and the Defense
Agency has T'equested foT'
basic study and T'eseaT'ch on ship
missiles and foT' the aiT'
missile. It would appeaT'
that the tounng mission
is mOT'e inteT'ested in picking up
techniques than in buying missiles.
11. International Defense Review,
Vol. 4, No.6 (December 1971),522.
12. Sekiya Reiji, Ope Cit., 28-29;
Aviation Week and Space Technology,
May 24, 1971, 47. Also see Kamakura
Takao, "Fukyoka ni Nihonteki sangun
fukugotaisei no tenkai" [The Develop
ment of the Japanese-type Military
Industrial Complex Under the Depres
sion], Ekonomisuto (November 16,1971),
24.
I
13. 1. F. Stone, "The War Machine
Under Nixon," in Seymour Melman, ed.,
The War Economy of the United States
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1971),
29. In 1969 Stone cited figures esti
l
mating the total cost of the Anti
Ballistic Missile program at over
I
I
$12 billion, including R&D costs.
I
14. Nitta Shunzo, "Shin sangyo
seisaku to sangun fukugotai" [The New
Industrial Policy and the Military
Industrial Complex], Keizai Hyoron
(November 1971), 42.
!
15. See General Tsukamoto Masa
toshi's diatribe, "Kyoki shita ka?
1
Umihara kyokucho" [Have You Gone
Mad, Director Umihara?], in Gunji
kenkyu [Japan Military Review]
1
(August 1971),161-165.
16. All quotations are from the
official Defense Agency publication
Japan's Defense, published in Octo
ber 1970. I am indebted to Jon Sher
wood and John Dower for this transla
tion.
17. Japan's Defense, 19 and i.
18. Yomiuri Shimbun, April 28,
1971; Hsinhua, May 10, 1971, as cited
in Foreign Broadcast Information Service
(cited hereafter as FBIS). In the event
of renewed fighting in the Korean penin
sula, GSDF troops and their equipment
could be deployed to the 38th Parallel
in approximately 15 hours' time, i.e.
within a single night. They would be trans
ported by ferry from Shimonoseki to Pusan
(7 hours), and thence over high-speed
expressway from Pusan to Seoul (7-8
hours)
19. Japan's Defense, 14. The empha
sis is mine.
20. Sekiya Reiji, Ope Cit., 28.
21. Japan's Defense, iii.
22. In a revealing phrase, the White
Paper calls the public's "revulsion to
ward the military" one of "the scars
of war." (p. 36) It makes more sense to
day, however, to see aversion to aggres
sive militarism as part of a world
wide trend in which the Japanese people
are the world's avant-garde.
23. Japan's Defense, 11.
24. Yomiuri Shimbun , evening edition,
Apri1 27, 19 71.
25. For the Weimar analogy see
Yoshihara Koichiro, 70 nen ampo to Nihon
no gunj iryoko [The 1970 Ampo and Japan's
Military Power] (Tokyo: Nihon Hyoronsha,
1969), 5-7.
26. Article 9 of the present 1947
constitution states as follows:
Aspinng sinceT'ely to an inteT'
national peace based on justice and
the Japanese people foT'
eveT' T'enounce WaT' as a soveT'eign
nght of the nation and the thT'eat
OT' use of fOT'ce as a means of
settling inteT'national disputes.
In OT'deT' to accomplish the aim
of the pT'eceding
sea and aiT' as weZZ as
otheT' WaT' wiU neveT' be
maintained. The nght of belZi
geT'enay of the state wiZZ not be
peoognized.
27. Martin E. Weinstein, Japan's
Postwar Defense Policy, 1947-1968
(New York and London: Columbia University
Press, 1971), 120.
28. George R. Packard III, Protest
in Tokyo--The Security Treaty Crisis of
1960 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ
ersity Press, 1966), 320.
31
29. Quoted from New China News A
gency (NCNA), International Service,
May 13, 1971, in FBIS, China-7l-93.
Partial, official Japanese corrobora
tion is provided in the advertisements
in Beei nenkan 1971 [Defense Yearbook
1971] .
30. Koji Nakamura, "Japan: Nippon on
the March," Far Eastern Economic Re
view (Hay 14, 1970), 13.
--31. Ichiyo, "Mishima and the
Transition from Postwar Democracy to
Democratic Fascism," Ampo--A Report
from the Japanese New Left, No. 9-10
(1971),42. A brilliant, inspired
article, indispensable for understand
ing where Japan is headed in the 1970s.
32. Ibid., 43.
33. Nasao Inaba, "Modern History
Documents and the Meij i Centennial
Series," Japan Institute of International
Review, Vol. 4, 1965-68,
214-215.
34. Yoshihara Keichire, OPt Cit.,
246-247.
35. Yamada Kazuo, "Gunkokushugi
fukkatsu to Nihon eiga no doke" [The
P.evival 0 f Hilitarism and Trends in
Japanese Cinema], Zen'ei [Vanguard],
No. 332 (December 1971), 157--158.
36. See The Japan Interpreter,
Winter 1971, 76.
37. Quoted from Gunji kenkyu (Janu
ary 1971) in Yoshihara Keichire, "Yon
jibo ni miru kokube ishiki--minshushugi
guntai no ronri to mujun" [Defense Con
sciousness in the Fourth P1an--The The
ory of the Democratic Army and its
Contradiction], Ekonomisuto (June 1,
1971), 25.
38. Quoted from Soviet Colonel
A. Ebudokimofu [phonetic translitera
tion of the Russian name from the Jap-'
anese--my translation], "Japan's New
Samurai Spirit," Red Star (November 11,
1971), as translated into Japanese in
Gunj i kenkyu (Feb ruary 1972), 116.
39. Writing for an American audi
ence in the October 1969 issue of Foreign
Affairs, Kiichi Aichi, then foreign
minister, had argued (p. 35) that " ... it
is both possible and desirable to devote
considerable time and energy to encour
aging public interest in outward-looking
ideas, gradually weaning the public
away from lit tle-Japanism. "
40. This provocative phrase is Nuto
Ichiyo's. See note 31.
"Ampo" = The US-Japan Mutual Security Treacy
The "Ampo" treaty system is the basis of US-Japanese collaboration
M
in the pacification of Asia. It is a sophisticated, evolving
relationship affecting the lives of people allover the world. It
has produced a national way of life intolerable to the Japanese
people, who are resisting it with every means at their disposal.
Ampo, the English language magazine, is one small, but important
means. It is not impartial, nor is it meant for impartial readers.
In the interests of meaningful international solidarity Ampo tries
to report accurately the view of Japan and the world from the
p
perspective of the people who are in struggle here. Militarism,
monopoly capitalism, repression, pollution, racism coming 0
O
down on us here and you there. To what extent will we understand
each other's experience and stand together?
Subscriptions are $6.00 a year (for six issues). For subscriptions
write to Ampo, 1232 Market Street, Rm. 104, San Francisco, CA 94102.
(For editorial correspondence write Ampo, p.O. Box 5250, Tokyo
International, Japan.)

32
\
\
LeatberDecks iD Noltb CbiDa, 1945
I
I
I,
David Wilson
The decisive phase of the Chinese
Civil War is said to have begun during
the summer of 1946, hardly a year after
the Japanese surrender and about six
months after General George Marshall
went to China to assist the Kuomintang
and the communists in negotiating to
ward a peaceful settlement of their
conflict. The failure of the Marshall
Mission and the subsequent communist
victory is often seen as America's fail
ure--the failure of liberal democracy
to provide an alternative to communism
and revolution and the failure of the
American war aim--to establish lasting
peace and stability in Asia. But even
before Marshall's arrival in China,
the United States had actively inter
vened on behalf of the Kuomintang and
undermined possibilities for a nego
tiated political settlement in China.
Since 1943, the Americans had been
concerned with the growing threat of
civil war in China. Afraid that an in
ternal conflict might end China's re
sistance to the Japanese, the Americans
urged Chiang Kai-shek to seek a politi
cal settlement of his differences with
the communists. Toward this end, in the
autumn of 1944 General Patrick A. Hurley
began meeting with representatives of
both parties in attempts to negotiate
a settlement. When the Japanese surren
dered on August 15, 1945, discussions
increased in intensity, with Mao Tse
tung flying from Yenan to Chungking on
August 28. The Americans, who were eager
to build China into a stable, unified
country, and anxious to prevent the
spread of Russian communism, joined
the two parties in expressing determina
tion to seek a peaceful political
t
I
i
I
settlement of China's problems. In North
China, however, actions contradicted
words, and the Americans carried out a
policy which brought the Kuomintang and
communist armies into conflict, and over
night transformed American soldiers from
enemies into allies of Japanese imperi
alist forces.
In August 1945, the communist-led
guerrilla forces, who had spearheaded
resistance against the Japanese in North
China and Manchuria for nearly a decade,
controlled vast areas of the countryside.
A million and a quarter Japanese troops,
and another 1.7 million Japanese civi
lians controlled most of the major cities
and the communications lines in North,
Central and East China. Kuomintang
armies were confined largely to South
and Southwest China. If the Japanese
surrendered to local forces, the vast
majority of Japanese troops would surren
der to the communists, turning over both
weapons and effective control of North
China to them. In order to avoid having
to recognize the communists' control
over North China, and to prevent them
from acquiring Japanese weapons, Pres
ident Truman announced that the United
States would transport KMT troops from
South China into Japanese-held areas
in Central and North China. Truman
ordered the same Japanese troops, which
had conducted brutal "three-all" paci
fication campaigns throughout North
China in the preceding years, to "main
tain order" until KMT or American
troops could arrive in North China to
accept their surrender.
l
To discourage
the Japanese from surrendering to the
communists, the U.S. notified the Jap
anese government that soldiers would be
33
guaranteed return to their homeland only
if they surrendered to the U.S. or to
Chiang Kai-shek or his subordinates.
2
In September the first two divisions
of U.S. Harines were ordered to proceed
to China to accept the Japanese surrender
on behalf of the KMT, to assist with the
repatriation of the Japanese army and
civilians in North China, and to guard
railroads and other communications lines
in the area. The First Division of U.S.
Narines left Okinawa on September 26,
and arrived in Tangku on September 30.
They moved straight into Tientsin, and
on October 6, surrender ceremonies were
held in that city.
3
The Japanese, who
had continued to hold Tientsin since
their official surrender in August,
turned it over to the Marines, who began
patrolling the city to maintain order.
4
A few days after the Marines landed
in Tientsin, Chou En-Iai told General
W.A. Worton that the Red Army would
fight to prevent the Marines from moving
to Peking. Worton, however, was extreme
ly eager to take Peking. Acting on
orders which gave him permission to
"occupy such .. areas as he deemed ne
cessary. for the security of his own
forces," Worton had already prepared for
the Marines' advance.
5
He therefore
told Chou "that the l1arines most cer-'
tainly would move in, that they would
come by rail and road ... , that III [Ma
rine Amphibious] Corps was combat
experienced and ready, that it would
have overwhelming aerial support, and
that it was quite capable of driving
straight on through any force that the
Communists mustered in its path. ,,6
After a brief clash with communist
guerrillas on October 5, the Marines
and KMT troops, which the U.S. had air
lifted to the north, "liberated" Peking.
That same day Chu Teh officially pro
tested American interference in China's
internal affairs. Unequal treaties had
been abolished, the Japanese had been
defeated, but foreign troops still occu
pied China's historic capital.
In the cities occupied by the
Marines, Japanese troops were disarmed,
but on the rail lines and in other cities
not yet occupied, the Japanese contin
ued to man their positions in aoopepa
tion with the U.S. forces.
7
As Admiral
David E. Barbey later pointed out, " ...
the Marines were in no hurry to have
the Japanese withdraw, for they were
useful allies. They protected the bigger
cities and guarded the bridges and rail
lines from communist-led guerrillas."8
American planning hinged on Japanese
troops holding their posts until relieved
by the KMT troops to North
China.
9
The American Government, sensi
tive to U.S. public pressure which called
for a general demobilization of troops
and non-involvement in China's affairs,
had ordered the Marines "to avoid parti
cipation in any fratricidal conflict in
China. "10 General Albert Wedemeyer had
advocated, and Washin,ton had approved,
a policy of continuing to use the Japan
ese forces to prevent the communists'
seizure of vital cities and communica
tions lines. 11
Thus the principle of having Asians
fight Asians was applied in North China
long before it was exalted to the level
of high policy by the Nixon administra
tion as "Vietnamization." On the rail
roads of North China it was Japan's
crack forces which did the dirty work
for the U.S. Within weeks of the defeat
of Japanese imperialism by allied forces,
Japan's troops were arrayed in a new
anti-COIlUr.:;"T1ist struggle, this time on
the side ot the United States. Delay
in demobilizing the Japanese allowed
the KMT forces which had been trans
ferred to North China to concentrate on
another enemy: the Eighth Route Army.
Japanese repatriation proceeded slow
ly. By the end of 1945, for example, only
33,500 of some 158,500 Japanese in the
area of Tsingtao had been repatriated.
The slow rate at which the Japanese were
being returned to Japan was due not so
much to lack of troop ships as it was
to the reluctance of the KMT to release
railroad guards or vital civilian tech
nicians.
12
In early November the KMT was
reportedly using 30,000 Japanese engin
eering troops to repair the Peking-Hankow
rai1road.
13
On November 16, General
Wedemeyer, who must not yet have accepted
America's new relations with the Japanese,
34
said that he regarded the Japanese in
North China as America's "prisoners of
war." Nonetheless, one-third of all
Japanese troops in the area were still
armed, in order, Wedemeyer said, to "pre
clude disorders. ,,14 During these months
after the war, the official Marine His
tory notes, "the mutual trust of the
Japanese and the Marines extended to
the point where they mounted guard over
the railroads of Hopeh together. "15
Near the end of October, General
Wedemeyer became exasperated in his
attempts to follow contradictory orders
from Washington, which included avoiding
involvement in Chinese affairs and the
transport of KMT troops into communist
held areas. He urged Washington either
to bring in the number of u.s. troops
needed to "do the job," or to pull the
entire military mission out of China.
16
General George Stratemeyer suggested at
the same time that "if there were no
change of the mission of the China Thea
ter or of the Marines," then November
15, 1945 should be set as the pull-out
date.
17
News of the proposed pull-out
spread quickly among the Marines! who
were eager to return to the U.S. 8 But
Washington policy-makers saw the with
drawal of U.S. troops as tantamount to
handing over North Olina to the commu
nists--which to many of them meant Rus
sian control. They were not prepared to
accept the division of China. On the
other hand, to bring in more troops would
not only flout the overwhelming desire
of the American people to bring the
troops home, it would also risk Soviet
intervention in North China. The Russians
had 80 divisions with approximately
1.5 million men and a large amount of
new supplies stationed in and near Manchu
ria. The Russian troops were strong
since they had met only trifling Japan
ese resistance between their entry into
the war and the Japanese surrender .19
Therefore the Marines stayed, and their
orders remained contradictory.
While the U.S. Government continued
to explain officially that its troops
were in China only to help repatriate the
Japanese and assist in the prevention of
civil war, the Marines were engaged in
a virtual war with the Chinese communists.

In October 1945, when the negotiations
in Chungking had appeared most promis
\
ing, the U.S. had airlifted three KMT
armies--the 3rd, the 92nd, the 94th,
all U.S.-trained and equipped--north to
Peking (the 92nd and 94th) and to Nan
king (the 3rd). These armies had moved
swiftly and with apparent success a
gainst retreating communist forces,
thereby helpin
6
torpedo the KMT-CCP
negotiations.
2
U.S. planes controlled the skies
of China, though official reports
stated that pilots were under general
orders not to fire on Chinese villages,
often carrying no ammunition at all.
What the planes actually did was to
fly regular missions over the railroads,
to scout, and occasionally to fly sup
port for KMT troops engaged in combat
with the communists.
2l
Marines guarded
the trains between Tientsin and Peking,
and escorted trains carrying coal from
the Kailan Mining Administration to
Tientsin or Chinwangtao. Clashes with
communist guerrillas were frequent,
and Marines would shoot back when fired
upon.
22
On November 5, 1945, Yenan radio
accused the Marines of machine-gunning
a village near Tientsin. On November
6, U.S. tanks were driven through
the streets of Tientsin in a show of
force. On November 16, Wedemeyer author
ized the Marines to carry out air straf
ing of a village on the rail line be
tween Tangshan and Chinwangtao, from
which guerrillas had fired on trains
carrying coal from the Kai1an mines to
Chinwangtao. In the firs t week of
December, Marines mortared a village
near Tientsin after one Harine had been
killed and another wounded near the
vi11age.
23
In another effort, General
Dewitt Peck and the KMT General Tu Li
ming agreed that the Marines would mount
guard over all the major railroad
bridges between Tangku and Chinwangtao,
thus freeing extra KMT troops to be
used in an offensive action against the
communis ts. 24
Marines also controlled the port of
Chinwangtao from which KMT armies
launched attacks against the communist
35
armies defending Shanhaikuan, 10 miles
to the north. The KMT, with American
air support, drove the communists out
of Shanhaikuan in mid-November, thus
opening one Kuomintang route into Man
churia.
25
In spite of the nature of the Marines'
activities in North China, Secretary of
State Byrnes claimed on November 22 that
U.S. troops were in North China solely
because of the promise the Americans
had made to repatriate Japanese troops.26
While such statements may have convinced
some Americans in the U.S., the Marines
in China were extremely dissatisfied.
The newspaper Stars and Stripes reported
from Tientsin on December 27 that the
"morale of trigger-happy, battle-weary
Marines in North China is lousy." A Ma
rine lieutenant complained to a reporter
that his men were asking him why they
were stationed in North China: "As an
officer I am supposed to tell them, but
you can't tell a man that he's here to
disarm Japanese when he's guarding the
same railroad with Japanese. "27
Such was the nature of the American
position in China when General Marshall
arrived in Chungking in December 1945.
He had been appointed by Truman to
sponsor impartial negotiations between
the communists and the Nationalists. In
fact, he was simply another part of the
American effort to assist the victory
of the Nationalists over the communists
in North China. 28
Under Marshall the negotiations pro
ceded during January and February 1946,
but skirmishes continued between the
communists and the Kuomintang troops
which had been moved north. As Russian
forces pulled out of Manchuria in April
1946, fighting between the CCP and KMT
broke out in earnest. By the summer of
1946, civil war had spread from Manchuria
across North China, and hope for a politi
cal settlement faded.
In focusing their attention on Amer
ica's role as a mediator in the nego
tiations, Americans have lost sight of
America's other role during the first
few months after World War II ended. To
Americans the role of the Marines was
minor. Only a limited number of troops
was committed to China and few Marines
were killed or wounded. The Japanese no
doubt found it strange to move so
quickly into an alliance with the Marines
"of Okinawa fame," but they apparently
had few objections to continuing to do
what they had been doing for the past
eight years. To the Kuomintang leaders,
the presence of the U.S. soldiers in
North China and the assistance the U.S.
provided in moving troops to the north
made a military victory over the commu
nists seem more possible. On the other
hand, for those Chinese who saw American
soldiers join with Japanese troops to
guard cities and communications lines,
and for those who had to fight or flee
from American-equipped KMT troops, the
Americans were another force of imperia
list invaders with whom to contend.
Thus it may be said that America's
real failure came not at the negotiating
table, but in North China, where a policy
of promoting peace and stability meant,
in fact, promoting anti-communism and
counterrevolution. The decision to
oppose the communists virtually dicta
ted a second decision: to make allies
of the Japanese Imperial forces, whom
the Americans had struggled to defeat.
Even before Marshall arrived in China,
the U.S. had moved to replace Japan
as the major power in Asia and had drawn
the lines which led to a generation of
suspicion, hostility and conflict.
FOOTNOTES
1. U.S. Department of State, Foreign
Relations of the United States; Diploma
tic Papers, 1945, Volume VII, The Far
East, China (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Govern
ment Printing Office, 1969), 530-531.
2. Herbert Feis, The China Tangle
(New York: Atheneum, 1966 [1953]), 359.
3. Benis N. Frank and Henry I. Shaw,
Jr., Victory and Occupation, History of
the U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World
War II, Volume V (Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Marine Corps, 1968), 557.
4. As Frank and Shaw describe it,
"Here (in Tientsin) as in Tsingtao, the
city's unruly element was given sharp
warning that the Marines would act s trong
ly to prevent disorder whenever local au
36
thorities failed to do so." Ibid., 568.
5. Ibid. 546. In both Tientsin and
Peking, "there were sizeable barracks
once used to house troops protecting
diplomatic missions following the Boxer
Rebellion; these were naturally set
aside for [U.S.] troop use." (p. 547)
6. Ibid.
i
I
I
7. Marines reported that when they
arrived in North China, the Japanese had
been keeping order "smartly and efficient
ly." "Still proud, they felt no guilt."
They were and fel t themselves to be "an
unbeaten army." See "The Situation in
North China," Marine Corps Gazette, Vol
ume 30, No.4 (April 1946), 14.
8. David E. Barbey, MacArthur's Am
phibious Navy, Seventh Amphibious Force
Operations, 1943-1945 (Annapolis, Md.:
U.S. Naval Institute, 1967), 332.
9. Admiral Barbey describes the
poor conditions of some of the KMT troops
who were transported to North China on
U.S. vessels. "Records were few and life
was cheap. If a man died aboard ship
he was tossed overboard. The men were
counted when they came aboard and again
when they debarked. Any difference in
numbers was presumed to be because the
men had died at sea. II Ibid., 342.
10. Frank, Dp. Cit., 532-533.
11. Foreign Relations, 1945,
531-534; Frank, Op. Cit., 532.
12. New York Times, November 6,
1945, 1. (hereafter NYT)
13. Ibid., November 17, 1945, 2.
14. Frank, Op. Cit., 580.
15 . Ib i d., 649.
16. Ibid., 572. Perhaps Wedemeyer's
clearest statement of the American posi
tion was made to a reporter on Novem
ber 9, when he said, "We are not supposed
to take aggressive action against any
Chinese, except to protect American lives
and property." NYT, November 9, 1945, 1.
17. Frank, Op. Cit., 569.
18. NYT, November 10, 1945, 11.
19. Raymond Garthoff, ed., Sino
Soviet Military Relations (New York:
Praeger, 1966),62. The Russians may
have been suffering from a shortage of
fuel, however. The U.S. had only 53,000
Marines in North China and 113,000 troops
in all of China in 1945.
20. Lionell Chassin, The Communist
Conquest of China (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1965), 59-60;
Frank, Op. Cit., 568.
21. NYT, November 17, 1945, 2.
22. NYT, November 8, 1945, 7.
23. NYT, November 6, 1945, 1; Novem
ber 7, 1; November 17, 1; December 9, 23.
24. Frank, Op. Cit., 588.
25. NYT, November 9, 1; November 10,
4; November 11, 1; November 17, 2.
26. NYT, November 22, 8.
27. NYT, December 26, 1945, 5.
28. For the decision to continue to
assist Chiang by moving troops north,
see Foreign Relations, 1945, 767-769.
Aia for
The President is bringing US soldiers
hOITle froITl Indochina. But the United
States Airforce, the bOITlbers, the heli
copters, and the air support troops,
reITlain to wage war as fiercely as ever.
The Nixon AdITlinistration is reducing
casualties to politically "tolerable"
levels, while continuing to pursue a
ITlilitary victory in Indochina. But
nothing has changed for the people of
Southeast Asia on whom the high explo
sive bOITlbs. the napalm, and the anti
personnel weapons continue to fall.
For the first time, an American organi
zation has been formed to send medical
aid to the victims of us intervent-ton
in Indochina. Funds are nouJ being col
. lected to buy 1. medical supp"lies--anti
I malarial drugs-; antibiotics vitamins
etc. 2. medical as requested
by medical te.rtbooks
and journals for North Vietnam and for
the liberated zones of South
i and Cambodia. We need your help.
I Please send donations and enqu1: ries to:
I
! MEDICAL AID COMMITTEE FOR INDOCHINA
474 Centre Street
Newton, Mass. 02158
[:I<Medical Aid for Indochina, Inc. consists
of concerned physicians, healthcare work
ers, and other groups and individuals.]
37
FOR THE CONCER.NED ASIAN SCHOLAR
DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS ON CHINA: ABIBLIOGRAPHY OF STUDIES IN WESTERN LANGUAGES,
1945-1970
Compiled and edited by Leonard H. D. Gordon and Frank J. Shulman. The vast expansion
of Chinese studies in the West since 1945 has resulted in an unusually large output
of dissertations, of which only a limited number have yet been published in their
entirety. This volume, the first bibliography ever to appear in print devoted
completely to Western-language doctoral dissertations on China, Mongolia, Tibet,
and overseas Chinese communities, lists 2,217 dissertations completed between 1945
and 1970 at a large number of universities in twenty-three countries. Published for
the Association for Asian Studies. 335 pp. Cloth, $12.50. Paper, $3.95
MODERN CHINESE POETRY: AN INTRODUCTION
Julia C. Lin. Beginning with a description of the elements of traditional Chinese
verse, the author examines the poets who were instrumental in creating modern
Chinese poetry, describing each one's techniques and style, major themes, faults
and virtues, and significant contributions. Published with the assistance of the
Asian Literature Program of the Asia Society. 278 pp. $10.00
LIANG CH'I-CH'AO AND MODERN CHINESE LIBERALISM
Philip C. Huang. Examines Liang's ideas about the nature of man and the needs of
modern China--a fusion of selected Confucian, Meiji Japanese, and Western ideas-
and discusses the intellectual tensions and challenges Liang encountered in politi
cal action. 200 pp., illus. $9.50
CHINA: MANAGEMENT OF AREVOLUTIONARY SOCIETY
Edited with an Introduation by John M. H. Lindbeak. Explores management principles
and practices in contemporary China, including such crucial areas as education,
law, policy-making, and army-party relations. The examination of the problems of
mass participation and authority in a changing society--especia1ly since the
Cultural Revo1ution--provides a current overview of the operation of the bureauc
racy in contemporary China. 410 pp., 39 tables. Cloth, Paper, $4.95
THE LAND REVOLUTION IN CHINA, 1930-34: ASTUDY OF DOCUMENTS
Tso-liang Hsiao. The role of Mao Tse-tung and his relation to Moscow during the
formative years of Chinese Communism is a crucial issue in Communist history. This
book documents the development of approach to agrarian policies, starting
with a land law enacted in Hsingkuo in 1928 and tracing shifts of emphasis as they
occurred. 374 pp., tables. $12.50
CHINESE COMMUNIST POLITICS IN ACTION
Edited an Introduation by A. Doak Barnett. These pioneering studies focus on
particular aspects of the Chinese Communist political system, especially at the
subnationa1 level, and the course of its development. "An unusual book of great
value to students of Chinese life."--Current History. 648 pp., i1lus. Cloth, $12.50.
Paper, $4.95
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS ___________Seatt1e 98195

I
THE GATE OF DARKNESS: STUDIES ON THE LEFTIST LITERARY MOVEMENT IN CHINA
T. A. Hsia. Prefaae by Franz MiahaeZ. Intl'oduation by C. T. Hsia. "A collection of
essays written by the late T. A. Hsia on the conflicts between left-wing literary
personalities and the Chinese Communist Party in Shanghai in the 1930s ....
Evokes the fervent spiritual and intellectual climate of left-wing circles at the
I
I
i
I
time."--JouronaZ of Asian Studies. 304 pp. Cloth, $7.95. Paper, $3.45
CHINESE INTELLECTUALS AND THE REVOLUTION OF 1911: THE BIRTH OF MODERN CHINESE
RADICALISM
i
I
MiahaeZ Gasster. "Gasster delineates admirably the varying meanings that such key
concepts as nationalism, republicanism, and socialism held for leading members of
the revolutionary camp. . An important study of the Chinese Revolution and of
the revolutionary pro'cess itself."--Library JOur'naZ. 336 pp. $9.50
THE COMINTERN AND THE CHINESE COMMUNISTS, 1928-1931
Riahard C. Thornton. "A rich account of intrigue, factionalism and struggles for
power masked in the 'Marxist-Leninist' polemics of the time. This study of
Li Li-san and his ill-fated struggle with the Comintern, Mao Tse-tung and the
Chinese Nationalists is the most complete that has yet appeared in English."-
China QuarterZy. 266 pp. $9.50
POWER RELATIONS WITHIN THE CHINESE COMMUNIST MOVEMENT, 1930-34
Tso-Ziang Hsiao. "Historical source material of the first importance. [Mr.
Hsiao's] commentary is invaluable, and essential to an understanding of the
material. "--JournaZ of South-East Asian History. "Primary sources for the study of
Chinese Communist history during the early thirties."--China QuarterZy. Volume I,
A Study of Documents, 416 pp. $8.50. Volume II, The Chinese Documents, 849 pp. $25.00
MAO'S CHINA: PARTY REFORM DOCUMENTS, 1942-44
Edited and transZated by Boyd Compton. "An important source for an understanding of
the Chinese Communist Party. A very clear introduction of fifty-odd pages explains
the origins of the documents that have been required reading for Chinese Communist
Party members since 1942."--Paaifia Affairs. 332 pp. Cloth, $6.50. Paper, $2.95
SOVIET AND CHINESE COMMUNISM: SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES
Edited with an Introduation by DonaZd W. TreadgoZd. Distinguished authorities
examine the recent past and present of Communism in the two countries. "Splendid
essays: integrated analyses which bring to focus the sum of our knowledge and in
sights on these difficult themes."--Current History. 472 pp. Cloth, $10.00.
Paper, $3.95
SECURITIES REGULATION IN JAPAN
Misao Tatsuta. Systematic investigation of securities, public offerings, secondary
distributions, small issues, and private offerings; the roles of issuer and under
writer; the laws governing registration of securities, disclosure to investors,
mergers, reorganizations, and conversions. 141 pp. $10.00
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS___________Seattle 98195
The Ceography of EDipire
Keith Buchanan
PART I. THE MILITARY FACE OF EMPIRE*
Wealth and poverty, overdevelopment
and underdevelopment, are sides of the
same coin; in a capitalist system the
one cannot exist without the other. This
is as true at the global level as at the
national level, and the U.S. Empire con
sists of both external and internal
colonies (e.g. the ghettoes or the In
dian and Chicano communities of the
Southwest).
Today a growing proportion of human
kind is beginning to understand this
and that they are not backward and
dependent because they are poor but
that they are poor and backward because
they are dependent and exploited. They
are moving towards an awareness that
poverty and suffering are caused., that
there are economic and political struc
ture8 that cause this poverty and suffer
ing, and that the attack on poverty means
an attack on these structures and those
classes and groups in whose interests
they have been devised. The attack on
poverty therefore takes on a revolu
tionary dimension.
It is to contain the revolts and the
potential revolts born of this growing
understanding of reality that the
mechanisms of repression and containment
depicted in Maps 1-8 have been developed.
And since the East Asian socialist coun
tries have offered the most uncompro
mising opposition to the U.S. policy of
global economic domination, and since
their socio-economic programs offer the
most successful and attractive means of
escaping from "development" as it is
understood by the wealthy nations, it
is against them that the maximum military
and political pressures have been deploy
ed. U.S. policies in Asia have thus been
tuteZQTY poZicies, designed to show what
may happen to a country opting out of
the Free World (i.e. the area within
which capitalist exploitation has free
dom of action).
The military machine whose global
deployment is indicated in the maps be
low has been used largely against refrac
tory elements in the external colonies
and dependencies of Empire. But if
there is one lesson to be learned from
events of recent years it is that the
techniques of repression and counter
insurgency, once perfected in "ongoing
laboratories" such as Indochina, will
sooner or later be used to enforce "law
and order
ll
among dissident groups in
the lIinternal colonies" of the Metro
polis itself .
40
{
t
j
I
I
MAPS 1 and 2. "GIVING HUMAN DIG
NITY AND FREEOOM A HELPING HAND"
-U. S. COMBAT FORCES IN EAST AS IA
SEPT. 1969 AND SUMMER 1971
u.S. intervention in the
Third World is described in these
words by u.S. counterinsurgency
expert James Eliot Cross. Each
black rectangle in this map (#1)
represents 10,000 pairs of
"helping hands" armed with guns,
napalm, and fragmentation bombs
--a total combat force in 1969
of approximately one million men.
The failure to achieve a
military victory by massive de
ployment of U.S. ground forces
in Vietnam and the growing oppo
sition to the u.s. involvement
in Asia among sizeable sectors
of the American public have forced
U.S. policymakers to drastically
cut the number of ground combat
troops in East and Southeast Asia.
By Fall 1971, U.S. forces in Viet
nam totalled some 214,000; Aus
tralian and New Zealand troops
had pulled back to base, prepar
atory to quitting Vietnam by Christ
mas, and the South Koreans an
nounced they were cutting the size
of their contingent by 10,000 men.
Nevertheless, the offensive capa
city of the U.S. remains. There
has been little reduction in the
u.S. air striking power (one in
every six U.S. servicemen remain
ing in Vietnam is in the USAF),
and naval units in East Asian wa
ters have a complement of over a
quarter of a million men (of whom
over one-quarter are marines) and
unknown numbers of planes and
missiles. It should be noted that
the increase in the South
ese regular army from 800,000 in
1968 to 1.1 million in August 1971
is almost identical with the cut
back of U.S. ground forces, and
that there are, in addition, some
4 million "popular defense" forces
--a total of 5.1 million men under
arms in a country of 18 million
inhabitants. These figures under
line the brutal truth behind Am
bassador Bunker's description of
Vietnamization as "changing the
color of the corpses."
"GIVING HUIAN DIGNITY AND FREEDOM A
HELPING HAND...."
u.s. COIBAT FORCES IN EAST ASIA
SEPT. 1969

PACIFIC.
[)PHlliPPIIES

'\l

FLEEn.

..,
6UII

,UVV"
.-1O,0001U
... _-_....

/ ..
....." ...
/.) 0111A1l ==

SEVEITH
. = FLEET

'\l
) 9y;p,

=PICIFIC
FLEET

- 10,088 lEI
'---"
(late summar 1971)
41
= ONE BASE
HAPS 3 and 4. "THE REAL BONES OF
THE AHERICAN MILITARY POSTURE TO
WARDS ASIA"-MAJOR U. S. BASES 1969
The reduction of U.S. forces in
Vietnam to below the 200,000 level
in late 1971 underlines the fact
that lithe real bones of the Amer
ican military posture in Asia" are
represented by a dense network of
almost 200 major bases. Almost
half of these are only tenuously
related to the Indochina conflict,
and the overall pattern acquires a
logic only in relation to a wider
policy of "containing" China and
the Asian socialist bloc as a whole.
Map 4 emphasizes the over
riding preoccupation of military
planners with the Asian as opposed
to the European socialist bloc;
territories bordering the Asian
socialist bloc contain almost one
half of the 399 major U.S. military
installations abroad. And of the
total of approximately one-and-a
quarter million U.S. servicemen
abroad, two-thirds were in late
1969 stationed in the Asia-Pacific
region.
...
.,
o
MAJOR U.S. BASES
1969
"THE REAL BONES OF THE AMERICAN
MlliTARV POSTURE TOWARD ASIA"
MAJOR U.S. BASES 1969
.. ...... ..... ...

:::::::::: ..........
U\!'" ..........
SOUTH JAPAN
KOREA ,0
OKINAWA rt
,0
6'
ITAIWAN

D

)
--....
',UVV '
, ..'
...... __....

MICRONESIA
1 BASE
42
1
I
r
{
I
I
I
1
U.S. MILITARY ASSISTANCE EXPENDITURES,
~ \ \ H . R MONGOLII
.::.: :
,,'
o ., 10,000 sq. lIilll
$2,500
Millions
1950 - 68
MAP 5. U.s. MILITARY ASSISTANCE EXPENDITURES, 1950-68
Department of Defense figures reveal that $33 billion was spent on foreign mili
tary assistance over the eighteen-year period 1950-1968, but this represents only a
fraction of the actual total. It does not, for example, include military aid to South
Vietnam since 1966, nor the inducements to South Korea and Thailand to supply merce
naries for the Indochina War (at least $1 billion in each case), nor a wide range of
"support" programs. The figure would more than double if U.S. Agency for International
Development (AID) funds were included'. AID data for a period of only fourteen years
(1953-1967) show an expenditure of $62 billion, of which over $46 billion was for
military aid and "supporting assistance" of a quasi-military character.
Expenditures have been rather evenly divided between Europe and the Near East/
Asian regions. But 95% of Europe's aid was given before 1963, and of this almost
one-third represented expenditures to enable France to fight the First Indochina War.
Department of Defense figures thus indicate that the U.S. expenditures for military
assistance to Asia and the Mideast amount to some $20 billion, or three-fifths of
the total for the world.
43
MAPS 6 and 7. "WE HAVE A PROGRAM FOR PEACE"--SECURITY
AND DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE 1971
The real thrust of the Nixon policy is illustra
ted by the proposed expenditures in the foreign aid
bill which the Senate rejected at the beginning of
November 1971.
The proposed expenditure was some $3.5 billion,
of which three-fifths was allocated for "security
assistance" and the remainder for "development and
humanitarian assistance." 68% of the security assis
tance funds were to be allocated to countries in the
East Asian/Pacific region (Cambodia alone was to get
one-seventh of all U.S. "security assistance" funds)
and 29% to the Near East/South Asian region. Thus
the planned allocation of security assistance funds
to Washington's Asian allies was to reach 97% of all
such funds, as compared with the three-fifths allo
cated over the period 1950-1968.
Relating proposed expenditures to the population
of the countries involved, Cambodia was to get $50
per capita, South Vietnam $33, Laos $20, and South
Korea $8; the consolidation of a fall-back position
is suggested by the $7.5 million of security assis
tance to Singapore ($3.5 per capita).
The buttressing of the shaky regimes on the Medi
terranean flank of Asia is illustrated by the pro
posed aid to Jordan ($15 per capita), Greece ($10)
and Turkey ($3). ''We have a program for peace," said
Nixon on June 3, 1970, using the word seven times in
an eighty-word peroration. As the 1971 aid bill and
Map 6 make clear, some parts of the world are to be
administered much bigger doses of this "Presidential
peace" than others
Allocations for "development and humanitarian
assistance" show a totally different pattern (Map 7).
47% was to go to the Near East/South Asia region
(almost two-fifths of this was earmarked for East
Pakistan refugee relief); 29% to Latin America
(where the largest allocations on a per capita basis
were to go to the Central American sector); and only
12% to the East Asia/Pacific region.
Abbreviations for both maps: RP = Regional Pro
gramsjLA = Latin AmericajIAO = Inter-American Organ
izationjAf = Africa;NE/SA = Near East/South Asia;
EA/P = East Asia/Pacific;EP:RR = East Pakistan Refu
gee Relief.
Million $

o . One mi
c
Million $
. , - - 300:
- - 100
~
- 30
- 10
<1
DOnelT'
44
I
t

Do
,

NE/SA REGION

EA/P.
DO
PROPOSED SECURITY ASSI STAN CE
DO
Oct. 1971
lion inhabitants
Do
NE/SA REGION.
INDIA
. n inhabitants
DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE
Oct. 1971
[J EA/P.
[!]

DD

MAP 8. TRAINING OF FOREIGN MILITARY
PERSONNEL, 1950-68
The u.s. military training program
is designed to create an indigenous offi
cer corps which can be integrated readily
into the U.S. military machine; it also
creates a powerful "client group" in key
countries of the Third World.
The thrust of the program is towards
the NATO region of Europe, the CENTO re
gion of the Middle East, and the puppet
regimes of East Asia. Of the total train
ed (287,221), over half were from the
Near East/Asian regions. The map under
lines the extent to which the Latin Amer
ican armies have been mercenarized and
the beginning of the same process in
key areas of Africa.
MAP 9. u.S. POLICE ASSISTANCE, 1961-69
Throughout much of the Third World
the distinction between the police and
the military, both preoccupied with "con
taining" change, is an arbitrary dis
tinction. u.s. police assistance, which
includes radio equipment, anti-riot gases,
small arms, patrol vehicles, and train
ing, therefore represents a logical ex
tension of the U.S. counterinsurgency
drive. Between 1961 and 1969 the U.S.
training program, which cost a quarter
of a billion dollars, reached "over one
million policemen in the Third World."
MAP 10. CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WARFARE
TRAINING IN THE U.S.A.
One of the more "specialized skills
furnished by the United States" (in
Melvin Laird's felicitous phrase) is
training in chemical and biological war
fare. These programs--and the spatial
pattern of countries taking advantage
of them--give an extra dimension to U.S.
military plans for the Third World.
Against what enemies are the armies of
Thailand, the Philippines or South Korea
developing their competence in this
field?
CBW techniques are particularly suit
able for use against the peasant popu
lations of the Third World, whose malnu
trition and low level of technology make
them highly vulnerable to biological wea
pons. Moreover, in contrast with nuclear
technology, CBW techniques can be readily
mastered and weapons of mass destruc
tion produced under relatively primi
tive conditions and at much lower
cost.

TOTAL TRAINED'
Thouland
- - __2'
- ---10
~ B
--.. ,
--- 1
TRAINING OF FOREIGN MILITARY PERSONNEL
D - Onl million inhabitant.
1950-68
46
-- -
I
t
-..
j
I
!
{
t
!
- --5
--1
o - One million inhabitants
Million $
~
- - 5 0
- - 10
L
U.S. POLICE ASSISTANCE,
1961-69
- - - ~ - - -
--_.---
rr-
L_

-
I
I
D
C.B.W. TRAINING IN THE U.S.A.
o
00
H
o
SOUTH Vll1NAM
- 5 Officers
[J - One million inhabitants
47
PARI' II. ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL
PATTERNS OF EMPIRE
The Asian policies of the U.S. and
the processes of global Vietnamization
derive from an increasingly desperate
attempt to maintain the control of the
United States over the greatest economic
empire the world has ever seen. Says
Claude Julien of Le Monde in The American
Empire (New York, 1971):
The intemaZ prospePity of the United
States dependS . in vepy ZaPge measupe on
her freedbm of aaaess to the natupaZ pe
soupaes of the entipe and mope
partiauZarZy those of the poop aountPies.
The AmePiaan eoonorrria empiY'e, -whiah in its
reaUty is highZy is opganized
to safeguard and extend this fpeedbm of
aaaess to the minepaZs and the agPiauZ
tupaZ ppoduats of the Thipd WopZd., a
condition whiah is essentiaZ to the main
tenanae of its intemaZ prospePity.
The income of the "average" person
living in the U.S. is some fifty times
that of his counterpart in India. Ex
pressing the situation in another way,
in terms of the number of "Indian
equivalents" (Le. how many people living
Thou.and Million $
e
---- 7
--- 2
- - %'
o .. On. million inhabitants
at the average Indian level the wealth
of the U.S. would support) we reach the
astronomical total of ten billion people.
The burden which U.S. affluence
places on the rest of humanity is illus
trated by the proportion of the world's
raw material output needed to sustain
this affluence. With 6% of the world's
population, the U.S. consumes 33% of the
world's bauxite, 40% of the nickel and
tin, 36% of the chrome, 14% of the
iron and lead.
When U.S. consumption is seen against
the finite character of global resources,
it is clear that it constitutes a major
obstacle to the future progress of that
two-thirds of humanity which dwells in
the Third World. Former World Bank
President Eugene R. Black has said that
if most of the people in the Third World
"are poor in the material things of life,
there is in much of this area a wealth
of resources waiting to be tapped." But
if they are tapped by the U.S. economic
empire, the gap between developed coun
tries and the Third World will continue
to grow; the poverty of the many will
deepen as the wealth of the few increases.
TOTAL
D
i
o
MAP 11. TOTAL VALUE OF U. S. DIRECT FOREIGN INVESTMENTS, 1969
The book value of U.S. foreign investments in 1968 was approximately $65 billion, rising
to $71 billion in 1969. Of this total, approximately 60% was accounted for by Canada and
Western Europe. 20% of all investments were in Latin America and only 2.5% in the Middle
East; this 2.5% was, however, responsible for 14% of the earnings of U.S. investments.
48

,
J
MINING & PETROLEUM
1
\
f
I
t
I
I
?'
\
J
,
f
,
I

MAP 12. U.S. INVESTMENTS IN MINING AND PETROLEUM, 1969
Investments in the mining and oil industries represent over one-third of U.S. foreign
investments. Of the total, 24% were in Canada, 22% in Latin America, almost 20% in
Europe, 7% in Africa. Approximately 8% of the investments were in the Western Pacific
region, extending from Japan through Southeast Asia to Australia. The Chase Manhattan
Bank estimates that capital expenditures in the petroleum industry alone will double in
the Asian/Pacific region during this decade, to reach an estimated total of $35 billion.
[Note. A = unallocated W. Europe. B = other Central America. C = other Western hemis
phere. D = other Latin American republics. E = other Africa. F = Middle East. G = other
Asian/Pacific. H = international, unallocated (rest of world).]
MAP 13. TOTAL EARNINGS OF U.S. INVESTMENTS, 1969
The so-called"less developed countries" account for 28% of total U.S. investments over
seas, but account for almost one-half of the total earnings. Of the total earnings
derived from these countries, almost two-thirds is accounted for by the petroleum in
dustry. The proportion of total overseas earnings accounted for by Canada and Western
Europe is considerably below their share of U.S. overseas investments.
TOTAL EARNINGS
D
. ~
ID
'-------'
49
ThDusand MlllIDn $
- - - _ - : _ : : : . ~ -- 7
c; _

One million Inhobltanh

o ~ OM million inhabitant.
MAPS 14 and 15. FOREIGN EXPANSION OF U.S. BANKS, 1960-1969
The world-wide expansion of U.S. banks underlines the importance of finance capital in
the imperialist process. In the last two decades the number of foreign branches of U.S.
banks has increased five-fold and their assets ten-fold. The total has risen from 124
in 1960 to 460 in 1969 and 532 in 1970. The thrust of expansion has been, first, to
wards the Caribbean and Latin America; secondly, towards Britain and the Common Market
countries; and third, as the 1969 map shows, towards the American rim in Asia.
[Note. A =Panama and Canal Zone. B = Puerto Rico. C = Bahamas and miscellaneous Carib
D = Pacific Trust Territories. ]
Rt ,I
1
-
1
-------.:
.--1
I
o Socialist countries
FOREIGN BRANCHES OF U.S. BANKS 1960 o One million inhabitants
kIlIH""
I.
aUt//'
I
[tr-
W1
I.
I
I
I_. __J
-JI
O
o Socllll.t count,I
o . 0... million Inhabitant. FOREIGN BRANCHES OF U.S. BANKS 1969
50
MAP 16. THE BRAIN DRAIN, 1962-1966
The American drive towards world
domination calls for an ever-expand
ing--and multi-national--army of scien
tists and technicians. According to a
UN survey undertaken by Professor
Ehsan Naraghi, one-third of the inflow
of scientists into the U.S. over the
period 1962-66 came from the underdevel
oped countries; in addition, it is esti
mated that 80% of the foreign students
coming to the U.S.A. to study do not
return to their home country. The Em
pire is hungry for resources--it is
also hungry for brains.
The increasing concentration of
skills in countries such as the U.S.
widens the development gap between the
White North* and the Third World; it
may be viewed as "intellectual Viet
namization" which uses people of Third
World origin to collaborate in the sub
jection of their own countrymen. Foreign
and domestic counterinsurgency programs,
the space race, and the spy-in-the-sky
program all draw scientific personnel
away from the basic human priorities
of Third World countries.
*White North = North America, Europe,
and the Soviet bloc.
THE BRAIN DRAIN
1962 - 1966
51
D
III THE U. S. HEARTLAND
~ LOST SINn 19.9
THE CULTURAL EMPIRE
:J On. million inhabitant.
MAP 17. THE COCA-COLA EMPIRE
u.s. consumption patterns have been it is a great equalizer, and in its con
sold to a considerable section of human sumption the affluent playboy of the
ity. This Americanization can be mea White North and the impoverished peasant
sured by the distribution pattern of a of the Third World find a common (Amer
commodity such as Coca-cola, which ranks icanized) humanity, transcending con
high among America's gifts to humanity. siderations of color, creed or cash.
Even the presumed derivation of this
trade name--from the coca plant which Coca-cola has, however, been rejected
Andean Indians use to deaden their hun in some parts of the world. Note the loss
ger, and the cola nut offered as a sign of bottling plants in China and Cuba
of friendship in West Africa (and for since the revolutions in those countries:
many lessening the need for food)- a loss of a symbol of U.S. culture and
emphasizes the multinational character a halt to the penetration of u.s. pro
of the Empire. Such a product, indeed, ducts which are part of the U.S. economic
helps realize the American dream, for empire.
52
l
!
J
SOURCES
\
Data on U.S. bases and U.S. personnel
is taken from Global Defense: U.S. Mili
tary Commitments Abroad (Washington:
t
Congressional Quarterly Service, Septem
ber 1969).
Military assistance expenditures and
\
figures for police assistance are given
in U.S. Military and Police Operations
in the Third World (Berkeley, Calif.,
and New York: North American Congress
on Latin America). AID figures were
taken from Richard Barnet, Interven
tion and Revolution (New York and Cleve
land: World, 1968), 20. Details of CBW
and CBR training programs will be found
in Congressional Record, December 29,
1969, 10992 sqq. Congressional Record-
Senate for May 1, 1969 gives a listing
of military-funded research projects and
comment by Senator Fulbright (S44l7 sqq.).
Data for the "brain drain" is taken
from a UN survey by Professor Ehsan
Naraghi, cited in Kontinente: das Neue
Missionsmagazin (Oberhausen), January
1968, 3 and 25.
The data on Coca-cola processing
appears more tightly "classified" than
much V.S. military data; however,
d'Outremer (Bordeaux) contained in its
July-September 1970 issue a map and a
good deal of information presumably
"leaked" through Coca-cola' s French
office. Data on American investments
and earnings is taken from the Survey
of Current Business, October 1970.
The Annual Reports of the Board of
Governors of the Federal Reserve
System give details of overseas
branches of V. S. banks.
*NOTE: This essay appears in sub
stantially its present form simul
taneously in Open Secret: The Kissin
ger-Nixon Doctrine, edited by Virginia
Brodine and Mark Selden (Harper and
Row, 1972).
Coming in the next Bulletin: an entire
special issue on and edited by Asian
Americans, with articles on racism,
culture, legal discrimination, lives
of immigrants, plus original poetry.
DISPATCH
NEWS SERVICE INTERNATIONAL
1826 R STREET, N. W.
I
WASHINGTON, D. C. 20009 i
ASIAN REPORPS:
Dispatch Service a co
operative agency manned by young
scholars and publishes an
excellent bi-weekly newsletter for Asia
specialists--Asian Reports.
Articles cover up-to-date political and
economic deVelopments almost a dOzen
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Correction
In last year's special "off-AID/
S.1.V." issue of the Bulletin, Ngo Vinh
Long referred to Samuel Popkin's doctoral
:hesis on Vietnam as having been based
)n certain questionnaires put together
'y Ithiel de Sola Pool. In fact, Mr.
Popkin's dissertation was not based on
the particular questionnaires (which
were referred to by Mr. Long in his arti
cle), although while preparing his disser
tation Mr. Popkin did work simultaneously
on questionnaires designed by Ithiel Pool
with Department of Defense sponsorship.
53
Pal..olllDg Ih. Empi...
RefleclioDs 08 Ihe USS Pueblo
Frank Baldwin
. . . surrendered to a rabble of
gooks off the coast of Korea.
the greatest Oriental victoy.y over
the West since Pearl Harbor. We
will not live it down in our life
time. -- Rear Admiral Daniel V.
Gallery, Ret.
1
The U.S.S. Pueblo, an electronic in
telligence collection ship, was seized
by the Democratic People's Republic of
Korea (DPRK) off the port of Wansan on
January 23, 1968. For seven days world
attention shifted from Vietnam and the
seige of Khesanh to the North Korean
American confrontation. War in Korea
was possible. On January 30, 1968, the
Vietcong launched the Tet offensive.
Fighting reached the door of the Ameri
can Embassy and attention flitted back
to Vietnam.
Was the Pueblo seizure an unprovoked
violation of international law? Was it
an act of piracy requiring "swift restitu
tion," as the New York Times editorialized?
Senator Hugh Scott complained that "We
are being pushed around allover the
world." President Johnson went on tele
vision to tell the American people that
the North Koreans had connnit ted "ye
2
another wanton and aggressive act."
Or was the Pueblo incident similar
to the Tonkin Gulf incident, where the
U.S. destroyer Maddox committed provo
cative acts to induce a reaction from
North Vietnam? Or was North Korea the
target of a less dramatic monitoring of
radar defenses and communications in a
routine U.S. electronic espionage ef
fort? Was the North Korean seizure a
reaction to diverse U.S. and South Korean
pressures applied from the Korean penin
sula to Vietnam?
The drip, drip of information about
the Pueblo, in these books and Congres
sional hearings, and the flood of dis
closures about the Tonkin Gulf incident
3
and the Johnson administration's escala
tion of the Vietnam War, especially in
the Pentagon Papers, suggest a new inter
pretation of the events.
For students of government deception,
which will soon rank with Mom, apple pie,
and "Huey" gunships as symbols of the
American way of life, the Pueblo incident
scores fairly high. Not quite a classic
case, like the Tonkin Gulf Resolution,
which led to war. Nor quite as cynical
as the disavowal of the Cuban invasion at
the United Nations in 1961. But still an
important example of the tactics used to
manipulate American and world opinion.
The Pueblo case illustrates the judg
ment and values of the military and in
telligence managers. Their willingness
to risk lives and war for mafgina1 in
telligence data is one of the more ap
palling aspects of l'affaire Pueblo.
The nation's capacity to treat fairly the
sons it so casually sends on dangerous
missions in cold and unfriendly waters
in distant corners of the empire was se
verely tested.
The Pueblo affair was more than the
sum of its parts. It touched upon the
legacy of America's last Asian war and
perhaps foreshadowed the results of the
Vietnam War. Will U.S. ships be patrol
54
ling off the coasts of Vietnam fifteen
years after the war ends, as they were
in Korea? The Pueblo seizure affronted
America's pride and brought an ugly na
tionalistic and racist reaction. The
Pueblo incident revealed a hawkish, one
dimensional and inadequate Congressional
review of executive branch intelligence
adventures.
The U.S.S. Pueblo, formerly a light
auxiliary ship now converted into a
platform for electronic and radio in
telligence collection, sailed from Sase
bo Japan at 6:00 A.M., January 11, 1965.
The ship nosed through the Tsushima
Straits between Japan and Korea and
headed north for the border area be
tween North Korea and the Soviet Union.
Maintaining strict radio silence and
meeting no hostile ships, the Pueblo
sailed south along the coast of North
Korea, its sensitive electronic equip
ment probing North Korean communications
and radar defenses. On January 22 the
Pueblo anchored off the major port of
Until that point, the mission
had been "unproductive" and a "poor uti
lization of the platform. "4 The ship's
commanding officer, Lt. Commander Floyd
Bucher, found his mood on this maiden
mission "one of futility and frustra
tion.,,5
The next day, January 23, the Pueblo
was captured by North Korean patrol
craft after a brief attack in which one
American crewman was killed and no re
sistance was offered. The ship was led
into harbor, and the crew was re
moved that evening by train to P'yong
yang, the capital of North Korea.
North Korea charged that the Pueblo
had committed an act of "imperialist ag
gression" by intruding into its terri
torial waters on a "spy mission." The
U.S. government reacted with cautious
outrage. Government spokesmen conceded
that the Pueblo was a "Navy intelligence
collection auxiliary ship" but insisted
that it had not entgred North Korean
territorial waters. President Johnson
spoke gravely of the recklessness per
mitted the weak and activated almost
15,000 Air Reservists, a step avoided
throughout the Vietnam War. Senator
Church, a dove on Vietnam, became a
fighting sea gull with the Pueblo, de
claring that "the seizure of the Pueblo
and her crew by North Korea is more than
an act of piracy on the high seas, it is
an act of war against the United
States. "7
Within a week it was apparent that
North Korea, holding the Pueblo, the
crew, and bushels of incriminating clas
sified documents, plus a "confession"
from Bucher, could not be bluffed into
surrendering its catch. Despite Mendel
Rivers' exhortation to "bomb, bomb,
bomb," and Henry Jackson's judgment that
the U.S. was being humiliated by a "two
bit country,"S the administration re
jected military retaliation and settled
down to negotiate. Talks began between
North Korea and U.S. representatives at
Panmunjom, site in the Demilitarized
Zone between North and South Korea where
the truce agreement suspending the Korean
War was signed in 1953.
There was no progress in the dis
cussions during the spring. Public in
terest waned and official concern for the
crew seemed minimal to their anxious fa
milies. Mrs. Rose Bucher, stung by the
Navy's refusal to provide her with the
addresses of the Pueblo crew's families,
formed a "Remember the Pueblo Comnittee"
in April. Volunteers and contributions
poured in. "Remember the Pueblo" bt.mJ.per
stickers appeared around the country.
Mrs. Bucher, refusing to "go sit in a
rocking chair" as one Navy officer ad
vised, appeared on television shows
where she made harsh, impatient jibes at
the authorities. In May the Reverend
Paul D. Lindstrom prayerfully joined the
movement to obtain the release of the
crew by forming the "National Remember
the Pueblo Comnittee" in Prospect Heights,
Illinois. Lindstrom showed a penchant
for inside information, publicity and
strong talk, demanding the immediate
rescue of the crew. "Even if this means
war, we should do it; even if we have to
take over all of North Korea. "9
Finally, in late December 1968, the
U.S. and North Korea agreed upon a for
mula for the crew's return. On December
23 the U.S. representative at Panmunjom,
55
Major General Gilbert H. Woodward,
signed a statement acknowledging the
Pueblo crew's confessions and that the
ship "had illegally intruded into the
territorial waters of the Democratic
People's Republic of Korea on many oc
casions and conducted espionage activi
ties of spying out important military
and state secrets .. " However,
General Woodward, before signing the
"admission," made a formal repudia
tion of the document and indicated that
he was signing it "to free the crew and
only to free the crew. 1110 Two and a
half hours later the Pueblo crew were
released after eleven months of cap
tivity.
The crew was rushed home to spend
Christmas with their families, reaching
San Diego on Christmas day to an emo
tional welcome. A relieved American
public sympathized with "Pete" Bucher
when, struggling for self-control, he
eulogized the dead Fireman Hodges and
apologized for "the embarrassment we
caused the U.S. by losing .. one of
its very finest ships. . . . ,,11 Even
some of the newsmen were in tears. The
Pueblo crew was home, the ordeal over.
Not quite. On January 20, 1969, the
U.S. Navy opened a court of inquiry into
the Pueblo incident. The court's coun
sel explained that it was "a matter of
accountability. The Navy is an institu
tion that demands accountability. When
a sophisticated piece of equipment is
lost, someone must give an accounting
for this 10ss."12 On the third day of
the inquiry Commander Bucher was in
formed that he was "suspect of a vio
lation of the United States naval regu
lations" and that his testimony might be
used against him in "a subsequent
trial. ,,13
The inquiry continued amidst media
fanfare until March 13, 1969. It heard
104 witnesses and took 3,392 sing1e
spaced pages of testimony. The public
took sides, mainly for the humane if in
decisive Bucher and against the stern,
impassive, regulation-quoting board of
inquiry. Errors of judgment and omis
sion extending far beyond Bucher were
revealed. Public suspicion mounted that
a junior officer would be crucified by
the Navy "brass" because of an unwill
ingness to order his men to certain
death for no good reason.
On April 10, 1969 the court submit
ted its recommendations, which included
a general court martial for Bucher and
Ensign Harris, up the chain of command
to Admiral Hyland, Commander-in-Chief
Pacific Fleet, Hawaii. Admiral Hyland
reduced the courts martial recommenda
tions to letters of reprimand and for
warded the report to the Chief of Naval
Operations.
14
On May 6 Secretary of the
Navy John Chafee announced the court's
findings and command recommendations to
a Pentagon press conference. Chafee
quickly added that, "As a result of my
review, I have decided that no disci
plinary action will be taken against any
of the personnel involved in the Pueblo
incident." To a reporter's question
about whether he considered the Pueblo
incident closed, Chafee replied, "I
do "15 It was.
Except for the flotsam and jetsam of
these literary post-mortems. Three of
the books are accounts by participants:
Lt. Commander Bucher (with Mark Rasco
vich), Lt. Murphy (with Curt Gentry),
and Lt. (J.G.) Schumacher (with George
Wilson). They were there, and they give
virtually identical versions of the
major events, except for variations on
matters of personal behavior and respon
sibility, where significant discrepancies
emerge, especially in the Bucher account.
Bucher's is by far the most informa
tive of the Pueblo books. He was the
principal figure, involved with the
Pueblo from its recommissioning to its
capture. He fought the ship through the
Navy bureaucracy and the Bremerton ship
yard, adversaries only slightly less
dangerous than the North Koreans. It is
his story, his version, not the U.s.
N a v y ' s ~ Lt. Murphy's, or the crew's.
The picture is colorfully drawn of a
waif from Boy's Town who rose from en
listed man to submarine officer to com
mand at sea. Hard-drinking, hard-work
ing, right-wing politically, earthy but
sensitive; Bucher took a complete set of
Shakespeare to sea with him. He com
56
r
J
bined those qualities of toughness, fair
ness, and varied experience that led the
Navy to tap him for promotion and command.
Those same attributes made him the kind
of man to whom parents could entrust
their sons at sea. Off W ~ n s a n Harbor the
parents fared better than Navy tradition.
Hr. Murphy's overriding purpose in
Second in Command was to refute point
by point Commander Bucher's allegations
about Hurphy' s own courage and compe
tence, as expressed in Bucher's testi
mony before the court of inquiry and in
his book. The book is a savage revela
tion of Bucher's weaknesses, 452 pages
of sustained ad hominem assault. Hurphy
largely achieves his purpose; Bucher
stands exposed as mortally vindictive
toward Hurphy and neurotically obsessed
with evading responsibility for the loss
of the Pueblo. Murphy pitilessly describes
Bucher's demonic effort to find a
scapegoat for the surrender of the Pueblo.
Hurphy portrays H a man who would go to
ffi1y lengths to disavow responsibility
for his own shortcomings, with almost
a chronic compulsion to transfer his
failings onto others."16 Yet Hurphy also
disavows a little responsibility along
the way by glossing over some of his own
errors.
17
l'1urphy's demand for redress
and vindication is generally persuasive.
Commanding Officer Bucher was unfair to
Murphy; now it is the Executive Offi
cer's turn to rub ocean salt in open
wounds.
I
Hr. Schumacher's book is essentially
a personal record of his captivity.
Although disclaiming a desire for ex
culpation, the account centers on the
ardors of imprisonment, the inadequacies
of the Code of Conduct, the reasons
why the Pueblo crew cooperated with
North Korean propaganda activi ties,
and some efforts by the crew to resist.
I
Schumacher's message is that a boy from
St. Louis Country Day School, Trinity
College, where he majored in religion,
and St. Anthony Hall is a boy ill-pre
I
(
pared for the Cold War and its deter
mined interrogators. Schumacher laments
that he "was schooled in the humanities,
I
not the realities. "18 Yet perhaps it was
just that training that sustained him
I
I
,
I
during the detention in North Korea.
Although he "confessed" after mistreat
ment and intimidation, on the whole
\
Schumacher's performance in captivity
was a creditable one, earning the praise
even of the court of inquiry. Schumacher's
main complaint is that the courage and
suffering of the Pueblo crew in captivi
ty were not recognized by the Navy which
still insists that the Code of Conduct
must govern the actions of American mili
tary men. Judged by the Code, the per
formance of Schumacher and his shipmates
was inadequate if not dishonorable.
Schumacher's plea for more realistic
rules of behavior to govern captives,
the adoption of which would be ex post
facto vindication of the Pueblo crew,
has so far been rejected by the Navy
and the Defense Department.
A fourth book, Mr. Brandt's The Last
Voyage of U.S.S. Pueblo,19 is a recon
struction of the mission, voyage and
captivity of the Pueblo based on exten
sive interviews with the crew. The
reportage supplements Bucher, Schumacher
and Murphy in presenting the incident
from the crew's perspective. Salty anec
dotes about off-duty carousing not men
tioned by the officer authors are often
included. Mr. Brandt, City Editor of
the Norfolk News, was first to launch
his book in the Pueblo publishing re
gatta, and his haste shows: he includes
trivial and tedious detail, and his
account is straight description devoid
of style, drama or analysis. Mr. Brandt
interviewed, listened and wrote; no
thing more.
Two of the Pueblo publications are
ostensibly investigative reports.
Trevor Armbrister, a former Saturday
Evening Post bureau chief, made a pri
vate and prodigious effort to unravel
the Pueblo mystery. Armbrister defined
the problem as "How can so many decent
and dedicated officials--civilian as
well as military--commit so many blun
ders? Proceed upon such faulty premises?,,20
Armbrister's work is of the liberal, un
alienated, pre-Pentagon Papers genre:
"Let's take an honest look at things,
find out what went wrong, don't blame
anybody too much but help to correct
57
the errors so it won't happen again. II
The Fourth Estate in its mildly correc
tive function. A little heat on the au
thorities, not enough to burn them or
oneself, but enough perhaps to induce
them not to be careless or naughty again.
Armbrister's own "faulty premises,"
uncritical acceptance of the Washington
view of the world and unfamiliarity with
the Korean situation, lead him to see
the Pueblo incident upside-down. Arm
brister treats the Pueblo as a case
study in American unpreparedness. He
mentions Pearl Harbor and the Cuban
missile crisis as earlier examples. For
a moment Armbrister has our attention
as possible explanations are adumbrated:
treachery by the foe or hubris by our
selves. But Armbrister is too honest to
follow the Rusk-McNamara line that North
Korea was aggressive and treacherous for
objecting to American intelligence
penetration of its defenses. Is, then,
the key to the Pueblo incident pride,
that American "arrogance of power"
recently so much discussed and lament
ed? Armbrister writes as follows:
The lies in the nature of
the 'system.' By focusing on that
system as it functioned--and mal
functioned--before, during and
after the seizure of U.S.s. Pueblo,
I hope to enab le readers to under
stand more fuUy the illness whiah
afFlicts the military today. For
without public understanding, no
aure is possible.
21
There is an illness somewhere in
"the system." But 408 pages later, we
have no better notion of its nature or
cure. The author declines to pass judg
ment or make recommendations. The epi
logue of the book simply presents the
conclusions of the House
report on the Pueblo. The author begs
his own opening questions. Perhaps he
found the answers too painful. Instead,
the book trails away from the system
and back to the personal drama of
Bucher. Armbrister concludes his work
with a description of a poignant part
ing with the Bucher family: they drove
off into the Idaho sun, two American flag
decals on the rear window of their car.22
Congress and its investigative powers
did little better. True, no subcommittee
of the House Armed Services Committee
23
chaired by the late Mendel Rivers was
likely to rock the ship of state very
much. That was assured by the narrow and
technical mandate of the Special Sub
committee on the U.S.S. Pueblo:
to ascertain the national security
implications impliait in the loss
of the U.s.s. Pueblo; the re
quirement for corrective action
both administratively and legis
latively; and the requirement
for possible changes in the code
of conduct for military personnel
who are captured by hostile
enemy forces. 24
In the emotional, jingoistic mood of
1969 it would have required rare courage
to ask fundamental questions about the
moral and political aspects of the
Pueblo incident. They were not asked.
The subcommittee investigation did
establish the facts of the incident
and enumerate the mistakes that re
sulted in the loss of the Pueblo.
The report contains seven pages of
findings and recommendations. Thus
the report is indispensable for research
into the command and communications
structure of America's military appara
tus in Northeast Asia. But political
optimists who hope that increased
congressional interest and involvement
in foreign affairs will curb the nation's
military adventures should pause.
To begin with, when things got rough,
even Mendel Rivers' subcommittee was
brushed off. The Pueblo subcommittee
reported its difficulties with the
Department of Defense as follows:
... However, the subcommittee is
as much concerned with the demon
strated lack of candor of wit
nesses on this subject as it is
with the actual inaident itself.
Pentagon representatives who
testified or briefed congressional
committees immediately after the
Pueblo inaident and up unti l
58
March never hinted that
such a message from the National
Seaurity Agency [questioning the
mission] ever existed. As a matter
of there appeared to be a
deUberate effort to bury and ob
fuscate the fact by disaussion
solely of 'warnings' allegedly
issued by the North Korean GOv
ernment.
The Subcommittee inquiry was
specifically designed to unaover
areas in Pentagon poUcy and pro
cedure that. require aorrective
action. It is the opinion of the
subaommittee that Pentagon author
ities have dbne very little to
assist in attaining this objective.
Responses to subaommittee questions
which are 'technioally' correot
but consti tute '00l f truths' are
hardly calauZated to engender aon
fidence in the professed desire
of the Pentggon to correct any
shortcomings in established pol
icy or procedure. 25 [emphasis
added]
Furthermore, the subcommittee's ob
session was that the system work better;
that it be dismantled because it is
aggressive or provocative apparently
never entered their heads. As "respon
sible critics," the subconnnittee was con
tent to accept platitudinously the pre
mise of the Pueblo misadventure:
This suboommittee concedes that
reconnaissance aotivities of this
type must continue to be conducted
by our Gover-nment to insure the
availability of essen
tial to our national security
interests. 26
The subcommittee exercised its consti
tutional responsibilities by mildly
criticizing the inefficiency and cost
of the missions.
the subcommittee is not
aonvinced that the magnitude of
this intelligence reconnaissance
aativity is completely
nor is it persuaded that the many
millions of dbUars whioh are e:t
pended annually to support the
aotivities of our individual de
fense intelligence that \
DIA and NSAJ are fuUy and
properly utilized.
27
In other words, "Some of these trips
aren't necessary and you are spending
too much money." By uncritically
accepting the Executive Branch's rati
onale for the intelligence reconnaissance
activities and by confining the inquiry
to the functioning of commands and
communications, the subcommittee missed
the larger political and strategic
questions of the Pueblo incident.
The subcommittee's primary conclu
sions from the Pueblo affair said no
thing about the powerful military/
intelligence/international affairs
managerial elite addicted to provoca
tive foreign interventions. The prob
lem for the subcommittee was not how to
disengage from the modern American em
pire with its far-flung military garri
sons and "enemies" to be spied on,
bombed and "contained." The issue was
not the reckless power of the United
States in Asia but its weakness!
Couching its first recommendation in
ominous language--"absent or sluggish
response by military commanders,"
"frightful implications" and "emer
gencies of a national security na
ture"28_-t he subcommittee concluded that:
beoause of the vastness of the
military with its aom
plex division into multiple layers
of command, and the failure of
responsible authorities at the
seat of government to either
delegate responsibility or in the
alternative provide clear and
unequivocal guidelines governing
policy in emergency situations-
our military oommand structure is
now simply unable to meet the
emergency criterion outlined and
suggested by the President him
self. 29
To correct such "grave deficiencies"
the subcommittee recommended that a
59
"special study group of experienced and
distinguished civilian and military per
sonnel" be established by the President
to study the problem and make recommen
dations.
30
Staking out a position to the
right of the State Department, the sub
committee voiced objections to the re
turn of Okinawa to Japan. Even the ob
vious conclusion from Pueblo that the
United States was overextended in Asia,
not lost on the Johnson or Nixon admini
strations, never floated to the surface
in the subcommittee report.
Admiral Gallery's book is a self
inflicted caricature, a tirade against
long hair, hippies and weakness by "a
man who served in the Navy from 1917
to 1960." Admiral Gallery has enough shot
left in his cannon to fire broadsides at
everyone from the draft card burners to
the Pentagon "Whiz Kids," those civilians
who get in the way of the "real Navy."
Since Admiral Gallery's main sub
stantive point is that commanders at
sea should be permitted to respond
immediately in cases like the Pueblo
without interference from "long-hairs
and sob sisters," his book indicates
what we may expect if the Navy is un
leashed the next time out. Admiral
Gallery deplores uncertainty and ambi
valence; he puts his sea biscuits
right on the table in a special Note
which states:
Throughout this book I use the
word 'gooks' in referring to the
North Koreans. Some people objeot
to this word. By 'gook' I mean
precisely an uncivilzed Asiatic
Communist. I see no reason for
anyone who doesn't fit this
definition to objeot to the way
I use it.
3l
Admiral Gallery makes good his pro
mise. In a l46-page book, the words
"gook" or "gooks" appear' 54 times. Other
favorite expressions: "savages" (5 times),
"godless savages" (3 times), "Japs" (3
times), "ruthless savages" (1); also
"bearded oddballs," "long-haired English
professors," "goons," and "long-haired
literary eggheads." The "oriental mind"
is adduced to explain any behavior the
Admiral disapproves of. The civilian
managers at the Pentagon aren't left
out; the most frequent pejorative term
after "gooks" is "Whiz Kids," which
appears twelve times.
For Admiral Gallery, Bucher's
unforgiveable sin was that he left an
American ship in the hands of yellow
people. Gallery speaks for the "old
Navy" in deploring that "wars are no
longer fought only by enlightened civi
lized nations. Barbarians like the North
Koreans and Viet Cong are getting into
the act now. "32 (How much of this know
nothing chauvinism and racism lurks
in the present Navy high command?)
The Pueblo incident posed a formi
dable challenge to the U.S. government's
propaganda machine.
33
How do you explain
away the presence, let alone the loss,
of a secret electronic intelligence ship
off another country's coast? The John
son Administration could not conceal the
basic facts from Congress and the Amer
ican people. Unlike the Tonkin Gulf
incident, a substantial amount of the
story was immediately known and the
administration was forced by congres
sional and public interest/outrage to
explain the Pueblo's mission and its
capture. To invoke a high security
classification and claim "irreparable
damage" if information was released was
difficult; after all, the North Koreans
already had the ship in W ~ n s a n Harbor.
Years of practice with the Vietnam
caper, however, had made the Johnson
Administration craftsmen in deception.
The Vietnam propaganda strategy was
applied. Preempt the "legal," 1. e. the
morally justifiable position, depict
the other side, over and over again, as
the "aggressor," and deflect attention
from U.S. actions.
34
The propaganda strategy for Vietnam
was elucidated in a State Department
cable to diplomatic missions in the
Far East on February 18, 1965. It
required:
3. Early detailed presentation to
nations of the world and to public
of documented case against DRV
60
aiJ aggressor.
4. . . But foauB of pubUa attention
wi n be kept as far as possible
on DRV aggression; not on joint
GVN-US military operations. There
witt be no aomment of any sort on
future aations e:caept that al l
suah aations will be adequate and
meaiJured and fitting to
[Emphasis added]
In the Pueblo incident the administra
tion moved quickly to seize the legal
high ground. It asserted "categorically"
that the Pueblo's activities were legal
and completely unprovocative. It main
tained, therefore, that the North Korean
seizure was utterly without justification,
illegal and unprovoked, an act of "aggres
sion." No mention was made of prior U.S.
and South Korean military actions in
Korea, North Korean warnings about in
telligence missions off its east coast
or the escalatory effect of South
Korea's deep involvement in Vietnam.
The government built its defense
on the contention that the Pueblo
was operating in international waters
and was entitled to the customary immu
nity of ships on the high seas.
36
The
administration focused attention exclu
sively on the emotionally evocative issue
of freedom of the seas, stirring up the
blood lust in a frustrated American
public with faint echoes of Decatur and
the Barbary pirates. Dean Rusk argued on
"Meet the Press" on February 4, 1968,
that the 1958 Convention on the Terri
torial Sea and the Contiguous Zone was
applicable in the Pueblo case. Rusk
stated:
Let me point out something that is
quite important here. Warships on
the high seas--aacording to the 1958
aonventions on the law of the sea-
warships on the high seas have com
plete immunity from the juris
diation of any state other than
the !Zag state.
let's assume just for the
moment what is obviously not true
from the testimony from all
inaluding the North Korean side
J
that this ship was piaked up in
I
terri tonal watersJ or in waters
alaimed by North Korea to be
tonal waters. Even there
J
under
I
the aonvention of the law of the
seaiJJ 1958
J
artiale 23
J
it makes
it quite olear that if any warship
aomes into watersJ
the aoastal state aan require it I
to leave. It does not obtain a
right to seize it.
37
How reasonable it sounded! Since the
Pueblo did not intrude, it was entitled
to the same immunity of any ship on the
high seas. Even if the Pueblo had acci
dentally entered Korean waters, inter
national law did not sanction seizure.
Therefore, the North Korean action was
disproportionate to the "alleged infract
tion," illegal and aggressive.
Dean Rusk, accustomed to se1f
serving interpretations of the SEATO
Treaty or the 1954 Geneva Accords when
dealing with acts of "Oriental aggres
sion," glossed over certain aspects of
the applicability of the 1958 Convention,
such as the fact that North Korea was not
a signatory to it. State Department law
yers, experienced from years of proving
"aggression" in Vietnam, subsequently
developed a more complete if no more
convincing brief which argued the ille
gality of the North Korean act.
Legal authority outside the govern
ment, however, has reached different
conclusions. Cornelius F. Murphy, Pro
fessor of Law, Duquesne University
School of Law, rejected the applica
bility of the 1958 Convention because
"the body of rules known as the inter
national law of the sea rests upon pre
mises of peace which cannot realisti
cally be applied to the antagonistic
relationship between the United States
and North Korea. "38 Uurphy, with approp
riate lawyerly and academic restraint,
destroyed the Ruskian argument:
Seleation of applicable legal rules
dependS upon a prior aharaateri
zation of the relevant issues ...
preliminary identifiaations of
61
adverosal'Y oonduot as ' aggroession '
made avai lab le the legal noroms
needed to legitimize Ameroioan pol
icy in Vietnam. Seoroetar-y Rusk's
invooation of the Geneva Convention
on the LCfJJ) of the Sea as a SOUT'oe
of roelevant noT'mS in the Pueblo
inoident roefleoted the desiroabiZitY3
f ~ m the perospeotive of national
interoests3 of ohar-aoteT'izing the
prooblem in teT'mS of the lCfJJ)S of
peaoe. In faot3 however3 the fun
damental relationship between North
Korea and the United States lies
somewheroe between war- and peaoe3
and a failuroe to roefer to this
twilight status as a staroting
point for legal analysis impairs
the value of the subsequent juroal
ar-gumentation.
That Secretary Rusk should have for
gotten that the Korean War was not yet
over and that the U.S. and North Korea
were at each other's throats along the
Demilitarized Zone is surprising. Mr.
Rusk participated in the 1945 decisions
which divided Korea at the 38th Parallel,
was Assistant Secretary of State for the
Far East when the Korean War broke out
in 1950, and as Secretary of State pre
sided over a parade of departmental wit
nesses to Congress who emphasized the
possibility of renewed fighting in Korea
during the 1960s.
Nevertheless, the Secretary of
State needed Murphy's reminder that the
1958 Convention assumed conditions of
peace which did not exist between the
United States and North Korea. The
jural relationship is one of suspended
hostilities dating from the Armistice
Agreement of July 27, 1953, which ended
the combat of the Korean War. Murphy
notes that "During the period that an
armistice is in effect . the state of
war continues and its rules govern the
belligerents' conduct. ,,40 In the years
since 1953 the Armistice Agreement has
been violated many times by both sides;
the situation is one of intermittent
conflict, not the peace Dean Rusk im
plied.
The defense and strategic arrange
ments of the United States concerning
North Korea match the jural definition
of a state of war. The United States
has maintained about 50,000 troops in
South Korea since 1953; an American in
fantry division guarded a portion of the
Demilitarized Zone in direct contact
with North Korean units from 1953 to
1971,41 taking and inflicting casual
ties; the United States has a Mutual
Defense Treaty with South Korea and
countless American officials in several
administrations have emphasized the
hostile relationship with North Korea
and the possibility of renewed warfare.
Mr. Hurphy's legal interpretation accords
with the political and military real
ities of the Korean peninsula in 1965-69.
Considering that a state of war
still exists in Korea places the North
Korean action in a different light. The
North Koreans seized the Pueblo but
they did not sink it, as they might have.
The crew was detained for eleven months
due to American intransigence, not North
Korean. North Korea was prepared to re
lease the Pueblo men as early as May
1968.
42
The North Koreans fired only
when the Pueblo refused to heave-to;
they ceased firing as soon as Bucher
complied with their orders. The only
American fatality occurred during the
capture of the Pueblo. Have U.S. Forces
exercized as much restraint along the
coast of North Vietnam or even in the
"friendly" waterways of the Mekong
Delta against peasant sampans?
Anatole France once remarked re
garding the fairness of the law that it
prevented the rich and poor alike from
sleeping under the bridges of Paris.
A similar inequity exists in the 1958
Convention on the Territorial Sea and
the Contiguous Zone which the U.s. cites
as protection for intelligence ships
which probe inside other countries with
highly sophisticated electronic devices.
Was North Korea to tolerate the activi
ties of U.s. intelligence ships, neatly
placed one mile outside its territorial
waters, because of "freedom of the seas?"
Hiding behind a screen of international
law, U.s. ships are free, as long as
they do not violate nautical parking
62
1
i
4
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
regulations, to obtain every nation's de
fense plans. The landlocked will be safe
but doubtless satellites will cover them.
At present only the technologically ad
vanced nations are "free" to use the
freedom of the seas for electronic
espionage.
43
Until international law
effectively prohibits such espionage,
the Asian targets of American intelli
gence and hostility--North Vietnam,
China and North Korea--are at a perilous
disadvantage.
Government apologists denied there
was any inequity in the United States
intruding electronically into North Korea,
while that country, lacking a navy,
could not conduct similar missions along
American coasts. The official explanation
held that "the other fellow is doing it
and so can we." The argument involves
the Golden Rule of Espionage, the "par
ity" concept, the intelligence commu
nity's equivalent to Dean Rusk's 1958
Convention.
The parity concept derives from the
fact that the Soviet Union conducts
electronic collection off the U.S. coasts
and therefore the U.S. has a similar
"right." This "right" has no legal basis
but is a de facto arrangement hammered
o u ~ b y competing national intelligence
organizations to regularize operations
and reduce untoward incidents that might
cause crises and raise insurance pre
miums for intelligence operatives. In
fact, the U.S. surface collection pro
gram was conceived in emulation of the
Russian use of trawlers for electronic
espionage. Since the U.S. accepted the
presence of Soviet trawlers and refrain
ed from seizing them if they strayed
into U.S. waters, a Cold War recipro
city had developed. The Banner, sister
ship to the Pueblo and its predecessor
in missions off the coast of the Soviet
Union and China, had been harassed but
not prevented from carrying out its
patrols.
American planners assumed North
Korea would acquiesce in the Pueblo
mission.
44
The assumption appears to
rest upon the outdated notion of mono
lithic communism in which the intelli
gence actions of one communist nation
automatically involve all others, either
as recipients of the information ob
tained or partners in the operation.
The actions of the Soviet Union after
the Pueblo and the EC-121 incidents
demonstrated that the U.S.S.R. and
North Korea do not have identical ob
jectives in Northeast Asia. Since that
divergence of national interests, and
North Korean insistence upon juche and
autonomy, have been acknowledged for
many years, the parity argument had
little, if any, applicability to North
Korea.
American officials insisted that
the North Korean seizure of the Pueblo
was an unjustified act of "aggression,"
"one link in a chain of provocative
North Korean actions which date back to
the Korean War. "45 North Korea did in
crease pressure along the Demilitarized
Zone from October 1966, and encouraged
subversive and guerrilla activity in
the South, including an attempted assass
ination of South Korean President Chung
Hee Park just two days before the Pueblo
seizure. Nevertheless, an objective
examination of the Korean situation and
the Pueblo incident indicates that
North Korea was reacting to at least
three kinds of U.S./South Korean provo
cations, all of which the administra
tion concealed or distorted. Those
provocations help to explain why North
Korea seized the Pueblo.
46
First, the Pueblo mission threat
ened North Korea's security, its very
survival. The administration success
fully deflected public attention away
from the grim purpose of the surface
collection program: to gather intelli
gence about "enemy" defenses so that
they may be destroyed if necessary.
The U.S. government's argument that the
U.S. will not attack North Korea and
thus such electronic intelligence is
purely defensive has a hollow ring in
an era of "protective reaction" and
"limited duration bombing." Mere pru
dence required North Korea to reject
such meager assurance, after the savage
American bombing of the Korean War and
two decades of consistent American
63
hos tility. The U. S. es calation in South
east Asia was a further reminder of
minatory policies.
However, granting that the United
States has no capacity (because of
Vietnam) or intention of attacking North
Korea, still there is no guarantee that
intelligence information about the North
will be used for defensive purposes. A
desire for unification is equally shared
in the South and the North. Neither side
is immune from the temptation of a
desperate gamble to unite the peninsula.
Precise knowledge of North Korea's radar
defenses would be invaluable if South
Korea attacked the North. In one sense,
U.S. intelligence ships are surrogates
for South Korea which lacks sophistica
ted electronic intelligence equipment.
Here the Pueblo incident parallels the
intelligence collection in the Gulf of
Tonkin in 1964-65. The lIintelligence
take" of the Pueblo may, in part or in
whole, be shared with the South Korean
military. The U.S. and R.O.K. have the
closest of command, communications and
planning relationship and have coordi
nated intelligence operations in the
past. Alternatively, the intelligence
data could be retained by the U.S.
under the division of labor enunciated
in the Nixon Doctrine: American planes,
superior to the South Korean air force,
could provide air support if hostilities
start. Even some of the oceanographic
research conducted by the Pueblo as cover
for electronic intercept operations had
a hostile strategic objective. Lt. Murphy
writes as follows:
Up until this time I had pre
sumed .that our ruo civilian oceanog
whom we would pick up
in would function solely
as cover for our spying activi
ties. I now learned that they were
to play a vital part in our intel
ligence-gathering. To cite only
one example: there is an
layer known as the thermal
which deflects sonar signals. Thus
a suhmarine can safely operate
underneath this layer3 without de
tection from above. Some of the
tests conducted by the oceano
graphers would be for the purpose
of pinpointing and mapping these
layers3 essential datctin case of
future invasion.47 [emphasis added]
A more immediate operational utili
zation of the Pueblo's intelligence data,
short of full-scale war, would be to
support South Korean along
North Korea's coasts.
4
Similar U.S.
Navy intelligence collection along the
coast of North Vietnam was used for South
Vietnamese covert operations against the
North. In fact, North Korea has alleged
numerous espionage activities along its
coast and unofficial observers in
South Korea are aware of clandestine
operations.
North Korea had shown over the years
a special concern for the security of
of its east coast which could have been
expected to lead to Korean action against
the Pueblo's hostile intelligence collec
tion. The National Security Agency ex
plicitly noted this North Korean concern
in a message to the Joint Chiefs of
Staff on December 23, 1967, questioning
the "minimal risk
ll
designation for the
Pueblo's mission. NSA noted that "the
North Korean Air Force has been extreme
ly sensitive to peripheral reconnaissance
flights in this area since early 1965.
11
49
Other signs of North Korea's determina
tion to protect the coast were listed,
including the sinking of a South Korean
naval vessel in the area in January 1967.
To NSA, "it was the first voyage in
which we were having a vessel linger for
a long period of time near North Korean
waters. It therefore was a special mission
as we saw it. 1150 As the North Koreans saw
it, too. In the tit-for-tat of Cold War
probes, the North Koreans had given
ample warning, by gradually escalating
their response to U.S. and South Korean
intrusions, that they would not tolerate
intelligence missions off their eastern
coast.
Secondly, the Pueblo may have stum
bled into a separate, private covert war
between North and South Korea, much as
the Haddox zipped around the Gulf of
Tonkin, in international waters, of
course, while the joint U.S.-South Viet
namese forces, in 34-A Operations, were
raiding North Vietnamese coastal areas.
64
Bucher is informative on the point:
I have given much consideration
to the motives made the
North Koreans dare attack and pi
rate U.S.S. Pueblo....Since re
turning home ... I have come into
possession of a lot of informa
tion I knew nothing about at the
time. Some of it has led me to the
conclusion that if the North Kor
eans had a U.S. Navy
ship manned entirely by U.S. Naval
personnel . .. they never have
pressed home their attack ....I am
convinced that they discovered
our presence one day later [after
the attempted assassination of
President Park] their assumption
that a South Korean
Navy ship (they are painted exact
ly like ours and often of American
construction). They next assumed
carrying a retaliation team
a mission to murder their
Premier Kim Il Sung.
His natural reaction be to
order his naval and airforce units
to make sure any landing attempt
be prevented and if possi
ble to capture the intruders; {f
have since also become of
common it is for both regimes
occupying that unhappy peninsula
to attempt aggressive infiltra
tions of each other's territor
ies).51 [emphasis added]
The Symington Hearings also docu
mented, for the first time to this wri
ter's knowledge, South Korean raids into
North Korea. Senator Fulbright ques
tioned the U.S. Ambassador to South
Korea, William J. Porter.
SENATOR FULBRIGHT. Have there been
no raids from the South to the
North? No action?
MR. PORTER. Nothing on the scale
that could be called as provoca
tive as that for
the North launched in 1968 against
the residence of the President
of South Korea.
* * * * * * *
SENATOR FULBRIGHT. And have not,
the Koreans have not infiltrated
the North?
MR. PORTER. Not as a planned cam
paign of notable dimension.
SENATOR FULBRIGHT. I mean in any
fashion. They don't do it.
MR. PORTER. They don't do it as a
matter of no.
52
The pivotal words of Porter's pre
varication are "as provocative as" the
Northern attack of 1968 and "of notable
dimension." By making the standard of
comparison the admittedly most serious
violation in fifteen years of truce,
the attempted assassination of Presi
dent Park, Porter left room for very
extensive South Korean operations into
North Korea. How many raids and against
what targets add up to "of notable dimen
sion?" Again, attacks from the U.S.-South
Korean side are not "provocative;" those
from the other side are. The North Korean
assessment would doubtless differ.
Ambassador Porter recovered quickly
from his lapse into veracity and ended
up denying any South Korean attacks on
the North. But other testimony admitted
South Korean intrusions into North Korean
territory.53 And Porter himself conceded
that he did not really know what was go
ing on along the sectors of the Demili
tarized Zone guarded by South Korean
troops, which was seven-eighths of the
line. 54
A third U.S.-R.O.K. provocation was
the American utilization of South Korean
troops in Vietnam from 1965, a dangerous
shift in the military balance in Korea.
55
President Johnson's desperate need for
"allies" in 1965 forced him to alter the
status quo in Korea and gamble that North
Korea would not react.
President Eisenhower had refrained
from intervention in Vietnam in 1954 be
cause America's European allies would not
help. Europe was equally reluctant a
decade later, so "allies" had to be re
cruited in Asia. President Johnson needed
the Korean expeditionary force to sell
the war to the American people as a
"collective response against aggression."
Again the Pentagon Papers are an invalu
able supplement to earlier revelations
of Hoopes
56
and the Symington Subcommittee
65
on the function of third-country forces
in making the war palatable to the Amer
ican public. They show that the admini
stration camouflaged the unilateral
American intervention with the illusion
of allied support.
A "more flags" strategy was devised
and presidential emissaries flew off to
round up stray troops to accompany the
Americans. The Thais and Filipinos were
lured into Vietnam by payment of large
enlistment bonuses: the U.S. picked up
the tab for all expenses. The contract
with the South Koreans, however, appears
to have been the most rewarding. Despite
their "intense desire to repay moral
obligations" from twenty years of Ameri
can assistance, the South Korean leaders
drove such a hard bargain that the ad
ministration classified the agreement
in embarrassment. It was expensive, but
President Johnson got the minimum for
eign participation needed to tell the
American public that the U.S. was part
of a "collective defense against ag
gression. ,,57
The administration obtained the
South Korean troops by its habitual
deception of Congress and the American
public. The matter was presented in
1965 as a South Vietnamese request for
assistance which South Korea selflessly
answered to repay moral obligations in
curred during the Korean War. However,
later congressional investigations and
the Pentagon Papers show that South
Vietnam did not want Korean troops and
resisted their entry into Vietnam,58 and
that the U.S. secretly paid for all costs
of the South Korean expeditionary force.
59
The South Korean intervention in
Vietnam began in February 1965, with the
dispatch of 2,000 non-combat medical and
engineer troops. Coyly designated the
"Dove Unit," these forces were a gradual
and "humane" cosmetic for the subsequent
introduction of thousands of South Kor
ean troops. Escalation began almost imme
diately. With South Vietnam collapsing
and the American decision to intervene
massively in April 1965, South Korea
sent an infantry division, with support
66
forces, and a Marine brigade, a total
of 18,904 troops. The South Korean expe
ditionary force steadily increased.
In 1966 another division, plus a regi
mental combat team and support forces,
in all 23,865 men, were sent. In 1967
a Marine battalion with sUBPort forces,
2,963 men, were deployed.
6
North Korea objected to the U.S.
South Korean intervention in Vietnam
strenuously and voiced unqualified
support for the NLF and North Vietnam.
As the U.S.-South Korean escalation ex
panded, North Korea announced its deter
mination to assist the revolutionary
forces. On October 5, 1966, Premier
Kim II Sung, speaking to a conference
of the Korean Workers' Party, extended
"the warmest militant greetings and
congratulations to the fraternal people
of North and South Vietnam who are
attaining brilliant victories and
accomplishing heroic feats in their
righteous war of resistance against
the U.S. imperialist aggressors."6l
Noting that it was "wrong merely to shout
against U.S. imperialism without taking
concrete steps to stop its aggression, "62
Kim 11 Sung urged that "all socialist
countries . shou1d render every possible
support to the people of Vietnam in
their righteous war of liberation. "63
The North Korean premier stated his
determination to act against U.S.-South
Korean forces in Korea as follows:
The Worker's Party of Korea and
the Korean peopZe regard u.s. im
periaZist aggression against Viet
nam as directed against themseZves
as weZZ and regard the struggZe
of the Vietnamese as their own.
Our peopZe wiZZ be more resoZute
in their struggZe against the
common enemy, u.s.
and wiZZ exert every possibZe ef
fort to support the peopZe of
Vietnam . ... 64
North Korea began its campaign of "strug
gle against the common enemy" by open
ing a limited second front along the
Demilitarized Zone in Korea.
To State Department and Pentagon
officials testifying before congres
sional committees, the North Korean
actions were "an intensified campaign of
violence and hostility against the Repub
lic of Korea and United States forces
ll
which began in 1966 and culminated in
the Pueblo seizure. A State Department
official cited the major North Korean
pressures and confided that:
These incidents may have some con
nection with the Viet-Nam situa
in that they may be an attempt
by Communists to divert South Ko
rean and United States
forces which together are resist
ing the aggression in Viet-Nam.
(The Republic of Korea has sent
about troops to South
Viet-Nam.) 65
North Korea kept heavy pressure along
the DMZ and increased subversive and
espionage operations elsewhere in South
Korea from 1966 to 1969 as a contribu
tion to the Vietnamese war effort.
66
The U. S. was forced to keep about 50,000
troops in South Korea and public unea
siness in South Korea inhibited the
R.O.K. government from further troop
dispatch to Vietnam.
The sequence of these events is
crucial to an assessment of North Kore
an motives in January 1968. The increase
in North Korean guerrilla and subver
sive operations came after South Korea
became deeply involved in Vietnam, in
fact only shortly after the second
South Korean infantry division was dis
patched. The fragile, tenuous detente,
which had kept violence at a relatively
low level in Korea since 1953, was upset
by the American-South Korean escalation
in Vietnam. To North Korea the massive
South Korean intervention in Vietnam
was a moral challenge: sympathy for
North Vietnam's cause ensured a North
Korean response.
67
The Johnson Administration immedi
ately acknowledged that the Pueblo inci
dent was related to North Korea's support
of North Vietnam and opposition to U.S.
and South Korean forces in Vietnam. Pres
ident Johnson went on television on
January 26, 1968, and stated inter alia
that "These attacks may also be an attempt
by the Communists to divert South Kore
an.and United States military resources,
together are now successfullu
resisting aggression in [em
phasis added]
A week later, stunned by the Tet
Offensive, President Johnson was certain
the Pueblo seizure was a diversionarv
move related to Vietnam. On February"
3, he said, "Practically every expert
I have talked to on Korea and North
Vietnam and the communist operation-
all of them, I think without exception-
believe there is a definite connection. 1169
When publicly stipulating the link be
tween the seizure of the Pueblo and
Vietnam, U.S. officials presented the
issue as evidence of a coordinated (mono
lithic?) communist strategy. That the
North Korean diversionary move might be
justified by the prior, sustained,
massive South Korean escalation was
not suggested.
The North Korean action forced a
redeployment of U.S. military units at
a crucial moment in the Vietnam War.
In a vain show of force, the Joint
Chiefs of Staff assembled Task Force
71 from the 7th Fleet.
The immediate movement of three
carrier (eVA) task groups l.':a8
ordered3 with suitable anti
submarine anti-air
and cruiser bombard
ment capability toward the Sea
of Japan at best speed. The force
UJas instructed to hold south of
Korea until further notice. 70
Additional air units were also trans
ferred from Vietnam. When the Pueblo
was seized, there were only seven U.S.
aircraft in South Korea. The number
rose to 182 after the incident, some
assigned from Cam Ranh Bay.71 Host of
these forces would have been directly
engaged in Vietnam; their removal from
combat operations was a significant
contribution by North Korea to the NLF
North Vietnamese war effort. From the
North Korean point of it was not
a bad day's work for four submarine
67
chasers and two MlGs.
North Korea's seizure of the Pueblo
had enormously significant repercussions
beyond the Tet Offensive. Like a stone
thrown into a pond, towing the Pueblo
into W ~ n s a n Harbor sent ripples of real
ity toward American and South Korea
leaders. According to a study by John
B. Henry II, the U.S. government had
obtained South Korean approval to send
still more troops to Vietnam in 1968,
an additional "light division." Henry
writes that lilt was with these troops
that U.S. military planners expected
to meet their requirements and stay within
the 'Program Five' ceiling of 525,000
American troops that had been approved
in July 1967." But the North Korean
actions in January ended the JCS plans
for covert escalation in 1968. South
Korea not only cancelled the dispatch
of additional troops; it was forced to
"take a hard look at the need for with
drawal of its two and one-third divi
sions from Vietnam.,,72
The Pueblo incident ended South
Korea's escalation in Vietnam. South
Korean forces in Vietnam were not in
creased above the pre-Tet level. Equally
important, American strategists, al
ready drafting requests for massive U.S.
reinforcements, probably a fatal move
politically in the 1968 election year,
were threatened with the loss of their
major "ally's" forces. Henry writes
as follows:
As estimated 50,000 additional
Amerioan foroes would be needed
to replaoe the South Korean losses.
Westmoreland thus faoed the possi
ble loss of more than half of his
aZZied troops just as Hanoi
launohed the largest offensive
of the war. He informed Washington
that the withd:Y'CllJal of South Kore
an foroes from Vietnam was 'mi Zi
tariZy unaooeptable, , and that if
insisted upon by the South Koreans
a 'man for man replaoement' was
imperative. 73
Eventually the dreary drama of U.S.
assurances to South Korea was played out
and the 50,000 R.O.K. troops were not
withdrawn from Vietnam. In February
1968, Cyrus Vance went to Seoul as a
special emissary of President Johnson,
and succeeded, with the usual package
of inducements--American money and
military aid--in persuading the
South Korean government to keep its
forces in Vietnam. 74 Nevertheless,
the reservoir of South Korean troops
for Vietnam had run dry. North Korean
pressure along the Korean DMZ ruled out
greater involvement in Vietnam. And
right at the moment when the JCS were
recommending "a reserve call-Up and
500,000 increase in over-all forces. "75
Whatever the immediate military or
political impetus for North Korea's re
sponse to the Pueblo, the consequences
were profound and far-reaching. At the
same time, the determined resistance
of the Vietnamese people against years
of American attacks had a perhaps deci
sive influence on U.S. leadership
during the Pueblo crisis. Paul Warnke
recalled a strategy meeting of senior
advisors.
I remember being struok by the
faot that this was one helluva
lot different than the Tonkin
Gulf deliberations. Tonkin Gulf,
as I unde'1'Stand it" the idea was
that if you showed firmness, the
Reds would baok off. Now everyone
figUl'ed this sort of approaoh
didn't work with Asian communists. 76
The real intelligence collection of
the Pueblo was in that belated awareness.
FOOTNOTES
1. Daniel V. Gallery, The Pueblo In
cident (New York: Doubleday, 1970),
ix, 99.
2. New York Times, January 24,
26, and 27.
3. See Anthony Austin, The Presi
dent's War (Philadelphia: Lippincott,
1971); Joseph C. Goulding, Truth is the
First Casualty, The Gulf of Tonkin Af
fair, Illusion and Reality (Chicago:
Rand McNally, 1969); and Eugene G. Wind
chy, Tonkin Gulf (New York: Doubleday,
1971)
4. F. Carl Schumacher and George C.
68
Wilson, Bridge of No Return, The Ordeal
of the U.S.S. Pueblo (New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1971), 72. Shumacher
translated the Navy language into "stu
p1
'd"
an
d
a waste of the taxpayers'
It
money." He thought that U.S. intelli
gence would learn from the inactivity
off Korea that Il t he Koreans were smart
enough not to chase around in the North
ern Japanese Sea in the dead of winter."
Ibid., 71.
However, Lieutenant Murphy, the
Pueblo's executive officer, disputes
this point, stating that the primary
purpose of the mission was to train
the electronic specialists aboard. The
contention is not convincing. Edward R.
:t-lurphy and Curt Gentry, Second in Com
mand (New York: Holt, Rinehart &Win
ston, 1971), 53.
5. Lloyd Bucher and Mark Rascovich ,
Bucher: My Story (New York: Doubleday,
1970), 165.
6. New York Times, January 24, 1968.
7. U.S. Congress, Senate, Senator
Church speaking on the Pueblo incident ,
90th Cong., 2nd sess., January 24, 1968,
Congressional Record, 888.
See also Trevor Armbris ter, A
of Accountability (New York: Coward
McCann, 1970), 249.
8. New York Times, January 25,
1968.
9. Armbrister, A Hatter of Ac
countability, 300-305.
10. New York Times, December 23,
1968. The full text of the "admission"
and statements by President Johnson and
Secretary of State Rusk are included.
11. New York Times, December 25,
1968 and Armbrister, A Hatter of Ac
countability, 345-346.
12. Armbrister, A Matter of Ac
countability, 350.
13. Ibid., 364, and New York Times,
January
14. Armbrister, A Matter of Ac
countability, 383-388.
15. New York Times, May 7, 1969.
16. Murphy and Gentry, Second in
Command, 442.
17. Compare for example, Bucher's
description of a serious administrative
oversight by Murphy (Bucher and Rasco
vich, Bucher: My Story, 155-157) with
Murphy's non-treatment of the incident
(Murphy and Gentry, Second in Command,
111) .
18. Schumacher and Wilson, Bridge
of No Return, 37.
19. Ed Brandt, The Last Voyage of
USS Pueblo (New York:' W.W. Norton, 1969).
20. Armbrister, A Matter of Ac
countability, v.
21. Ibid.
22. Armbrister, A Matter of Ac
countability, 402.
23. Hearings on the Pueblo inci
dent, and the loss of an EC-12l over
Korea in April, 1969 were held by a
special subcommittee of the House Armed
Services Committee. The subcommittee
chairman was Otis Pike (R-N.Y.). The
subcommittee's report was published as
U.S. Congress, House of Representatives,
Special Subcommittee on the U.S.S.
Pueblo, Committee on Armed Services,
Inquiry into the U.S.S. Pueblo and EC
121 Plane In'cidents, 9lst Cong., 1st
sess., July 28, 1969. This report is
hereinafter referred to as Pueblo Spe
cial Subcommittee Inquiry.
24. Pueblo Special Subcommittee In
quiry, 1629.
25. Ibid., 1656.
26. Ibid., 1620.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid., 1619.
30. Ibid., 1620.
31. Gallery, The Pueblo Incident,
xi.
32. Ibid., 70-71.
33. Even the more ardent disestab
lishmentarians may be moved to sympathy
for the task of the Pentagon public re
lations officer, Phil G. Goulding, As
sistant Secretary of Defense for Public
Affairs. Goulding has provided interest
ing details on the technical difficulties
of providing accurate information, on
those infrequent occasions when the go
vernment decides to do so, and the deci
sion by Secretary of Defense McNamara to
release communications intercept data on
the Pueblo seizure. Phil G. Goulding,
Confirm or Deny (New York: Harper and
Row, 1970), 262-305.
Lest sympathy break out for govern
ment apologists, or their league of
foundation and academic counterparts,
Senator J.W. Fulbright has provided a
useful look into how the Pentagon in
fluences the "truth" on questions of
interest to the war machine. For
example, in fiscal year 1969 the Army ,
69
employed 1,576 civilian and military em
ployees in its public affairs programs
and spent at least $13,929,000. In 1967
68, fifty-five half-hour, color films
were produced, including seventeen that
glorified the Army's role in the Vietnam
War. Senator J.W. Fulbright, The Penta
gon Propaganda Machine (New York:
Liveright, 1970), 68-70.
The allocation of funds for the hu
mane study of Asia in parity with the
amounts expended on government propa
ganda would help to restore the ba
lance of domestic political forces,
perhaps even give meaning to the
pluralist myth of American society.
34. The U.S. government suc
cessfully employed this strategy in
Korea twice before. The first time was
in characterizing the Korean civil war
as a war of aggression by North Korea
and involving the United Nations in the
conflict. George Kennan, then a high
State Department official, dismissed the
charge of "aggression" against North
Korea when he wrote in his memoirs as
follows:
This [the Korean War]
a civil not an interna
tional one; and the ter.m 'ag
gression' in the usual interna
tional sense was as misplaced here
as it was to be later in the case
of Vietnam. The involvement of
the United hastily
brought about by my colZeOifJues in
the State Department before I re
turned from my farm on that fate
ful Sunday was thus in no way ne
cessary or called for; and the
later invocation of a UN resolu
tion to justify military operations
extending beyond the parallel
seemed to me to repre8ent an
rather than a proper utili
zation, of the exceptional confi
dence accorded to us at that time
by the international community.
George F. Kennan, Memoirs, 1925-1950
(Boston: Little Brown, 1967), 490.
The same strategy was also used in
stigmatizing the People's Republic of
China as an "aggressor" for its limited,
essentially defensive intervention in the
war late in 1950.
35. Cablegram, State Department to
nine U.S. diplomatic missions in the Far
East, February 18, 1965, in Neil
Sheehan, et a1., The Pentagon Papers
(New York: Bantam Books, 1971), 431-432.
This book is hereinafter referred to as
Sheehan, et. a1., The Pentagon Papers.
36. Did the Pueblo intrude into
North Korean waters? These books con
sistently maintain that it did not.
North Korean materials which might re
fute this contention have not been
available to this writer.
37. New York Times, February 5,
1968.
38. Cornelius F. Murphy, Jr.,
"Pueblo, E. C. 121 and Beyond: A Sug
gested Analysis," Fordham Law Review,
XXXVIII (March, 1970), 445 (note 27).
39. Ibid., 440.
40. Ibid., 444. Murphy writes that
the State Department's "forms of evalua
tion lose their force as prime standards
of judgment in the question of espionage
vis-a-vis North Korea because the rela
tionship, if not strictly one of belliger
ence, is more realistically conceptual
ized in those terms than upon the as
sumptions of peaceful relations. II (Ibid.,
445).
The U.S. Ambassador to South Korea,
William J. Porter, described the situa
tion in Korea in terms supportive of the
Murphy analysis rather than the Secretary
of State's or his own department. Porter
testified as follows:
The armistice of 1953 was not
a peace 8ettlement. It laid down
the condition8 of cease-fire and
recommended a political settlement,
which has never been reached.
North and South Korea remain,
therefore, two parts of a divided
country and have no relations of
any kind. In con8equence almost
a million men have faced each other
along and near the 38th Parallel
8ince that year, including a size
able contingent of American
troops. . . .
U.S. Congress, Senate, Subcommittee on
United States Security Agreements and
Commitments Abroad, Committee on Foreign
Relations, United States Security Agree
ments and Commitments Abroad, 91st Cong.,
70
2nd sess., 1970, 1705. These Hearings
are hereinafter referred to as Syming
ton Subcommittee Hearings.
41. One U.S. infantry divis.ion was
withdrawn in 1970-71. The remaining
division is stationed away from the
Demilitarized Zone.
42. Murphy blamed Bucher's October
decision to "resist," by gestures and
ridicule of the North Korean authorities,
for prolonging their detention by two
and a half months. (Murphy and Gentry,
Second in Command, 282-284 and 319-320).
Long before the fall shenanigans the
North Koreans had been prepared to re
lease the crew. Quoting a State De
partment official, Hurphy writes as
follows:
On May B the North Korea:ns ha:nded
a dbcument to our negotiator at
Panmunjom almost identical to the
one he eventually signed. However,
at that time the State Department
considered the terms too prepos
terous to discuss. (Ibid., 319)
* * * * * *
A corrective comment on the crew's
experience in North Korea is also in
order. Bucher and some crew members
described their treatment in detention
as brutal and uncivilized, and spoke of
their captors as "savages" and "apes.
1I
Without minimizing the crew's ordeal it
is evident from the Pueblo books that
the Americans, on the whole, were treat
ed reasonably well.
Treatment varied over the captivity.
Immediately after capture the officers
and men were beaten and threatened with
summary execution to obtain confessions
that the Pueblo was on a spy mission and
had intruded into North Korean terri
torial waters. Several of the crew, in
cluding Bucher and Schumacher, attempted
suicide to avoid the disgrace of false
confessions or later forced disclosures
of sensitive classified information.
When the crew agreed to sign "con
fessions," they were left alone. There
was a second, brief wave of beatings,
condoned by or on superior orders, in
April. The final period of systematic
mistreatment occurred in mid-December
I
and was dubbed "Hell Week." The reason
was the North Korean discovery that the
i
extension of the middle finger was not a
,
(
"Hawaiian good luck sign," as the crew
I
had maintained, but an obscene gesture
of defiance. The North Korean authori
ties were outraged at this lack of "sin
cerity" and systematically beat the
prisoners, some very badly.
Other than these short periods of
intimidation and punishment, and the
random violence of individual acts of
brutality committed by a few sadistic
guards, the crew was not routinely mis
treated. Schumacher states that there
were only three or four "truly sadistic
guards," surely a better percentage than
in any American prison. (Schumacher and
Wilson, Bridge of No Return, 166).
The crew was first kept in a de
pressing, decrepit barracks. In March
they were transferred to another build
ing with much better quarters and facili
ties. Officers lived in single rooms;
enlisted men were six to a room. The
crew was allowed to exercise daily. They
played football until an injury convinced
the North Koreans that the sport was too
rough; soccer and volleyball were sub
stituted.
Propaganda movies and reading mate
rial were provided. In October the
crew were taken for a brief sightseeing
trip to a war atrocities museum. They
were also taken to the theater in P'yong
yang. Toward the end of their detention,
apparently as an inducement to possible
espionage recruitment, a small lounge
was set up in the barracks with tasty
favors designed to make the Americans
forget their plight: cookies, apples,
and once, wine.
Some in the crew were ill and weak
when released. This was attributable to
severe change of diet and resultant vita
min deficiencies. However, only one man
appears to have suffered permanent medi
cal disability from the diet deficiencies.
On balance, considering the severity
of the offense, espionage, the crew's
71
treatment was far from inhumane.
* * * * * *
43. These questions were raised by
William E. Butler, a research associate
of the Harvard Law School, at the 1969
annual meeting to the American Society
of International Law. Mr. Butler noted
that "the established law of the seas
has been outmoded by the advent of
electronic intelligence." He mentioned
that electronic devices could "penetrate
to the heart of a country's inland de
fenses" and disputed the high seas im
munity of reconnaissance vessels. An
account of the meeting states:
Mr. Butler . . . argued that
established law might be changing.
'Coastal states cannot be blamed
if they view offshore electronics
intelligence operations as a sub
stantially new phenomenon in in
ternational , he said.
He argued further that the
great with their wealth
and technological
were taking unfair advantage of
poorer countries that
could not afford their own re
connaissance systems. The great
he are engaging in
espionage, but claiming an im
munity of the high seas intended
primarily to protect navigation.
New York Times, April 25, 1969.
44. Bucher and Rascovich, Bucher:
MY Story, 17-18; Schumacher and Wilson,
Bridge of No Return, 59-60 and Murphy
and Gentry, Second in Command, 85.
Murphy wrote as follows:
with the Clark [com
mander of the Pueblo's sister ship,
Banner] believed, we had reached
something of a 'Merican standoff. '
We had spy ships; they had spy
ships (their 'fishing ,
seen so often off u.s. coasts and
in the vicinity of u.s. Navy ma
neuvers, had actually given the
United States the idea for the
AGER program). If they Hank one
of ours, they knew we could sink
one of theirs.
I did not think to ask Clark what
would happen if the same situation
occurred with North Korea or China,
neither of whom maintained spy
ships against which we could re
taliate.
I would later give a great deal of
thought to the question.
45. Letter, John P. White, Acting
Assistant Secretary for Congressional Re
lations, to Mendel Rivers, Chairman, Com
mittee on Armed Services, House of Repre
sentatives, in Pueblo Special Subcommittee
Inquiry, 1627-1628.
46. The purpose of this article is
not to comprehensively assess the pro
bable reasons for North Korea's actions
and list them in the pseudo-scientific
categories so fashionable in contemporary
political science methodology -- and
ideology. Accordingly, I do not main
tain that the considerations raised in
the following pages were the sole opera
tive factors in North Korean decision
making. Obviously, other policy object
ives were intermingled; for example,
North Korea's oft-expressed intention to
create a socialist revolution in South
Korea. My purpose is to direct attention
at three factors which have been neglect
ed or distorted in examining the Pueblo
incident.
47. Murphy and Gentry, Second in
Command, 53.
48. The U.S., in the name of the
United Nations, has supported South Ko
rean psychological warfare operations
against North Korea for two decades.
Symington Subcommittee Hearings, 1671
1678.
49. Pueblo Special Subcommittee
Inquiry, 1654.
50. Ibid.
51. Bucher and Rascovich, Bucher:
My Story, 405. Executive Officer Murphy
disputes Bucher's explanation, contend
ing that Bucher is merely making an ex
cuse for the loss of the Pueblo. Murphy
notes that messages sent from the North
Korean patrol boats, monitored by the
U.S., show that the Pueblo had been
72
,
I
identified as a IT. S. vessel. However,
1 that does not rule out the possibility
I
that the Pueb 10 was thought by the
North Koreans to be involved in a re
i
taliatory action. Murphy and Gentry,
Second in Command, 438-441. For the
monitored communications, see Schumacher
and Wilson, Bridge of No Return, 86, 89.
I
I 52. Symington Hearings,
,
1591.
53. Ibid., 1605. These limited ad
j
I
missions should probably be multiplied
by a factor of several thousand to ap
proximate the real total. See also
I
I
Horton Abramowitz, "Moving the Glacier:
The Two Koreas and the Powers,"
I
!
Adelphi Papers, No. 80 (London: Inter
1
national Institute for Strategic Studies,
1971), 4.
I

54. Symington Subcommittee Hearings,
i
I
1609.
55. For additional information on
the South Korean expeditionary forces in
Vietnam, see the following: Columbia
Chapter, Committee of Concerned Asian
Scholars, "South Korea's Involvement in
Vietnam," May, 1970; the author's "Korea's
Struggle for Self-Determination,"
Christianity and Crisis, July 26, 1971,
157-163, and "Money for Men," The New
Republic, October 9, 1971.
56. Townsend Hoopes, The Limits of
Intervention (New York: David HcKay,
1969).
57. Hoopes, The Limits of Interven
tion, 46, 49, 168-170. See also the
sy;ington Subcommittee Hearings for
Thailand and the Philippines.
58. Cablegram, Ambassador Maxwell
D. Taylor, Saigon, to Secretary of
State Dean Rusk, with copy to White
House for the attention of McGeorge
Bundy, in Sheehan, et al., The Penta
gon Papers, 443-446.
59. Symington Subcommittee Hearings,
1529-1554, passim.
60. Ibid., 1544.
61. Revolution and Socialist Con
struction in Korea, Selected Writings of
Kim II Sung (New York: International
Publishers, 1971), 118.
62. Ibid., 114.
63. Ibid., 119.
64. Ibid., 120-121. North Korean
sympathy for North Vietnam and the NLF
were described by Wilfred G. Burchett
in his Again Korea (New York: Inter
national Publishers, 1968), 165-172.
North Korea made another contri
bution to the war effort in Vietnam
by the deployment of air force per
sonnel to North Vietnam. In an
ironic twist, a sub-plot within the
Pueblo drama, the Pueblo sailed with
out competent Korean linguists be
cause adequately trained personnel
had been sent to Vietnam to monitor
the communications of North Korean
pilots. See Armbrister, A Hatter of
Accountability, 174.
65. Pueblo Special Subcommittee
Inquiry, 1628.
66. The scale of the North Ko
rean diversionary actions in Korea
is indicated in the proliferation of
serious incidents, from about 50 in
1966 to more than 550 in 1967; the
increase in U.S. casualties from no
killed and wounded in 1964-65 to 38
killed and 144 wounded in 1967-69
and a corresponding increase in
South Korean military and civilian
casualties. See Symington Subcom
mittee Hearings, 1730-1733.
These statistics are also availa
ble in reports of the United Nations
Command and the United Nations Com
mission for the Unification and Re
habilitation of Korea (UNCURl<).
However, these reports must be used
with great care because of their
partisan nature. For example,
South Korean provocations against
North Korea are understated or
omitted completely. For all intents
and purposes the United Nations
Command is a U.S. Command and its
reports should be interpreted as
U.S. reports, not U.N. reports.
This has, of course, been true since
July 1950.
67. For a factual summary, but a
decidedly different interpretation,
of North Korean policies from
October 1966 to the Pueblo incident,
B.C. Koh, "The Pueblo Incident in
Prespective," Asian Survey, IX (April
1969), 264-280. Professor Koh makes
no mention of the references to
Vietnam in Kim Il-sung's October
73
speech and finds a connection with Vietnam
the least plausible explanation for the
Pueblo incident (275). Even quintessen
tial Cold War analysis ages quickly;
Mr. Koh's emphasis and conclusions make
strange reading three years later.
68. New York Times, January 27, 1968.
It would be fascinating to know if North
Vietnam and North Korea coordinated
their actions in January 1968. Persons
familiar with North Vietnamese practices
doubt that North Vietnam would have in
formed any ally of the impending Tet
Offensive. Nevertheless, if there was
ever a time for coordinated strategy,
January 1968 was that time.
69. New York Times, February 4,
1968. A day or two earlier President
Johnson had asked General Westmoreland
and Ambassador Bunker as follows: "Do
you believe there is a relationship
between activities in South Vietnam and
those in Korea?" John B. Henry II,
"Feb ruary 1968," Foreign Policy,
No.4 (Fall 1971), 9.
70. Symington Subcommittee Hear
ings, 1748.
71. Ibid., 1747-48.
72. Henry, "February 1968," 10.
The cumulative effect of the Pueblo
incident and the Tet Offensive on U.S.
policymakers is adumbrated in a New
York Times analysis of the Washington
mood in early February:
The shook of the Vietoong ram
ooming on top of the humil
iating Pueb lo incident, Zeft
Washington n'UJ'W::;, grim and off
balanoe last week.
* * *
With the Pueblo incident as weU
as the boiling surge of fighting
in Vietnam to oontend with, Presi
dent Johnson privately told
Congressional leaders that he
might need to take measures to
send more aid to South Korea or
oall up specialists in the mili
tary reserves. But North Korea's
willingness to dioker put off any
immediate need for dras tio steps.
Similarly on the President
took no new major moves but ohose
to wait for aotions on the ground
to unfold. It was a in one
of the President's pet
for 'hunkering down like a jaok
rabbit in a Texas hail storm. '
New York Times, IIWashington Stunned by
One-Two Blow," February 4, 1968, Sec. 4.
Mr. Henry's research is the first indi
cation known to this writer that the U.S.
and South Korea were secretly planning
to sent even more troops to Vietnam.
This information was not revealed in the
Symington hearings. Aside from the now
routine deception of the Congress and
American people evinced in this clan
destine escalation, Mr. Henry's findings
may help to explain the precise timing
of the attempted assassination of
President Park and the seizure of the
Pueblo. If North Korea was aware of
these troop dispatch plans, North Korean
leaders may have concluded that serious
counter-moves were necessary to deter
the U.S. and South Korea. If they so
reasoned, their analysis was correct
and they obtained their objectives
at a minimal cost.
73. Henry, "February 1968," 10.
74. Armbrister, A Matter of Account
ability, 276-278, and Symington Sub
committee Hearings, 1711.
75. Henry, "February 1968," 11.
76. Armbrister, 260.
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75
"
EconoDlic DevelopDlenI
aDd Welfare in China
Victor Lippit
For most people in China, and par
ticularly for the poorest, the revolu
tion brought an unmistakable improvement
in living standards. Despite the ample
empirical evidence which supports this
view,l many prominent scholars in the
field of Chinese economic studies
2
have
chosen to close their eyes to it, re
lying instead on theoretical arguments
of dubious validity to maintain that
the Chinese people have been the victims
of their own revolution rather than its
beneficiaries. The characteristic argu
ment used by the proponents of this
view points to the high levels of invest
ment in the 1950s and claims that this
can have come about in a poor country
only at the expense of essential con
sumption. Their hegemony in the field
was so complete prior to America's
Great Bourgeois Cultural Revolution of
the 1960s that it is appropriate to
term their position the orthodox one.
It still prevails, despite the increasing
challenge to which it has been subject.
It is my purpose here to show the
theoretical deficiency of this argument
and then to indicate some of the empiri
cal evidence which controverts it.
Two of the works which stand as
pillars of the orthodoxy are The Economy
of the Chinese Mainland: National In
come and Economic Development (Prince
ton, 1965), by Ta-chung Liu and Kung
chia Yeh, and Communist China's Economic
Growth and Foreign Trade (New York, 1961),
by Alexander Eckstein. The former study
was undertaken for the United States
Air Force, long known for its scholarly
interest in the Chinese economy, with
76
the RAND Corporation as intermediary.
It incorporates large quantities of
data organized within a modern national
income accounts framework. As the work
covers, moreover, a critical timespan
historically (1933 and 1952-59), it
is generally useful as a basic reference
in its field. Despite its positive
qualities, however, the way in which
the authors interpret their own results
leaves something to be desired.
The jacket blurb sets the tone:
A Picture of a relentless drive
for industrialization at the ex
pense of living stand.a:r>ds is
presented in this authoritative
comparison of the economic
deveZopment of the Chinese Main
Zand in the Communist and pre
Communis t periods.
In the text itself we find:
THE hEAL COST OF THE COMMUNIST
INVESTMENT PROGRAM: THE DEPRESSED
STANDARD OF LIVING
per capita personal consumption
in 1952 was only about 85 per
cent of that in 1933--a substan
tial reduction.... On all bases of
per capita consumption
increased from 1952 to 1957; but
even in 1957 it was still sub
stantially below the 1933
in spite of the fact that per
capita output exceeded the prewar
amount by 7 per cent in 1933
prices and by as rrruch as 22 per
I
"
cent in tenns of 1952 prices. which had prevailed in the tradition
[79-83] al economy. Still, it is not quite
The Liu-Yeh estimates are based on
a number of assumptions which are open
to challenge. The 1933 national income
estimates in particular are based, un
avoidably, on a great deal of conjecture,
and the per capita income estimates for
that year are even less reliable due to
the absence of firm population statis
tics. But even granting the correctness
of the Liu-Yeh per capita income com
parison between that year and 1952,
their failure to take into account the
class structure of Chinese society makes
their analysis highly misleading. The
redistribution of income in favor of
greater equality may raise the income
and welfare of a large portion of the
populace even while national average
per capita income falls. In China, this
portion constituted well over half
the population. Liu and Yeh's use of
national per capita figures conceals
the real gains in welfare experienced
by workers and especially by poor and
landless peasants as a result of the
Chinese Revolution; I will return to
the empirical evidence which supports
this view below.
,The tone of Eckstein's book echoes
that of Liu and Yeh. Eckstein writes:
It would seem that the more dic
tatorial and totalitarian the
auspices under which development
takes the greater is the
accent on nationalism and power
at the expense of people's stan
dards of living. This tendency is
pronounced in Communist
where policy makers, more or less
uninhibited by the exercise of
consumer sovereignty, have tried
to impose their own preferences as
between present and future con
sumption [po 2]
It is certainly true, as Eckstein argues,
that the Chinese economy was character
ized by high investment levels in the
19508: net investment was higher than
20% of net domestic product in each year
of the First Five Year Plan period (1953
1957)3 compared to the levels under 5%
evident how the assumption that a high
rate of investment is inimical to the
interests of consumers crept into the
literature, although it probably has
something to do with political ques
tions: the issue is always raised with
regard to the Soviet Union, never with
regard to Japan. A simple abstract model
can best make clear the relations in
volved. Assume that
Y = G + I
C = .79Y
I = .21Y
ICOR = 3:1
where Y is national income, e = con
sumption, I (net) investment, and
IeOR is the incremental capital-output
ratio (the number of dollars which must
be invested in a given year to secure a
one dollar increase in output). The para
meters have been chosen in this model to
be fairly close to the Chinese reality
of the 1950s.
The model shows that national income
can take the form of consumption or in
vestment, that in each year 21% of
national income is invested (the rest
consumed), and that national income will
increase by 7% per year (the increase
in output will be one-third the amount
invested). Then, neglecting compounding
for the sake of simplicity, we can trace
the behavior of Y, C and lover time as
follows:
Year Y C I
0 100 79 21
1 107 84.5 22.5
24 2 114 90
3 121 95.5 25.5
4 128 101 27
It takes consumers four years to surpass
the level of consumption that would have
77
prevailed if they had sacrificed all in
vestment to consumption from the outset.
Actually, given population growth with
fixed supplies of land and capital, per
capita income would in all likelihood
be declining steadily if there were no
net capital formation. Thus it would
appear that four years of modest con
sumption sacrifice could secure an in
definite expansion of n a t i o n a ~ income
and consumption, assuming the same re
lations hold into the future.
Eckstein, in the passage quoted,
completely obscures this point. He does
so by making two contradictory sug
gestions, neither of which is accurate.
First, he suggests that consumption was
restricted not on behalf of freeing re
sources for investment, but on behalf of
"nationalism and power." He nowhere
tries to prove this point, presumably be
cause he cannot: military expenditures
in the 1950s absorbed a modest share of
national output, investment directed to
economic development was far greater,
and it led to steadily rising consump
tion levels throughout the 1950s, as the
data below will show. Second, he admits
that the limitation on current con
sumption makes possible increased future
consumption, but suggests that only dic
tatorial-totalitarian rule in China
overrode people's natural preference for
immediate consumption at the expense of
economic development. There is no way
to document this assertion, which on its
face is without merit.
4
In actual fact, the benefits brought
to the majority of Chinese people by the
new regime were not postponed even for
the moderate period indicated in the
model above: they came immediately.
While it is true that to increase in
vestment out of a given level of na
tional income consumption must be re
duced, the nature and impact of this re
duction in consumption can be obscured,
as noted above, by the use of national
average per capita consumption figures.
If consumption is dis aggregated to re
flect the existence of class distinc
tions in society a very different picture
emerges. Once again, the point can best
be clarified with the use of a simple
abstract model. In the example above,
78
the equation Y = C + I was used to show
that national income is composed of con
sumption and investment. It is possible
to take account of the existence of
classes by dividing consumption into
that of capitalists and landlords (C
l
)
and that of workers and peasants
(C
Z
). Then
Y = C + I
C = C1 + Cz
If Y is fixed, then C must fall for I
to rise. But it is possible for this
increase in investment to be financed
by a decrease in C
l
while C
z
increases
at the same time. The importance of this
point cannot be over-stressed precisely
because it has been ignored so studi
ously in the orthodox evaluations of
China's economic performance. It will be
worthwhile, therefore, to consider it
further from a slightly different
perspective.
A mythical country called Onofus
has, by prior arrangement with the
Registrar of Vital Statistics, a popu
lation of 100 and a national income of
$1,000. Twenty people receive half the
income and eighty the other half. Per
capita income for the upper ZO% is,
accordingly, $500/Z0 = $25, while that
for the masses is $500/80 = $6.Z5.
All income is consumed, so C1 and Cz
are $500 each. One day the revolution
comes to Onofus. The rich--typica11y
the owners of property--are told that
henceforth they must live like everyone
else. The income and consumption of the
masses rise by 20% to $7.50 each.
Accordingly, Cl falls to $150, and
Cz rises to $600. Then for the country
as a whole:
C 100 x $7.50 $750
I = $Z50
An increase in conventional living
standards proves entirely compatible
with a sharp increase in the share of
national income devoted to invest
ment.
A change of this sort is made poss
ible by income redistribution; the poten
tial scope for such a change depends on
the initial degree of inequality. The
example above approximates the condition
of income distribution in the United
States, where 20% of the population re
ceive 48% of the income.
5
In most under
developed countries, including China
prior to the revolution, income inequal
ity and the share of property income
in national income are much greater.
Two central points should emerge
clearly from the foregoing argument.
First, a high level of investment is
quite favorable to the welfare of people
in poor countries if their incomes re
flect the increase in national income
to which the investment gives rise.
Second, the reduction in consumption
needed to finance a higher level of
investment out of a given national
income may be borne entirely by those
with incomes substantially above the
average, typically the owners of proper
ty, whose sacrifice is that henceforth
they must live like everyone else. In
deed, if the initial inequality in in
come distribution is great enough, the
reduction in luxury consumption may
make possible not only an increase in
investment, but a general rise in mass
living standards as well. Both of these
points describe the historical exper
ience of China in the 1950s, as an
examination of some of the empirical
data bearing on consumption standards
and popular welfare will show clearly.
It will be useful first, however,
to compare the situation in 1952 with
that prevailing in China's traditional
economy in the early-to-mid 1930s.
6
Considering first the rural sector of
the economy, the land reform can readily
be seen to have brought about changes
in income distribution along the lines
discussed above. 7 In the 1930s, those
who rented land out to others owned
33.5% of the agricultural land and
received rent payments amounting to
10.7% of the national income. 8 Rich
peasants--those who employed full-time
hired laborers--received a surplus or
net value added by that labor above
and beyond its wages amounting to 3.4%
of national income. In the same period,
interest income in the rural sector
amounted to 2.8% of national income.
These income flows, collectively
amounting to 16.9% of national income,
were redirected by the land reform to
the poor and landless peasants. The
16.9% figure is an understatement of the
real gains brought by the land reform,
because it does not include the income
which had been siphoned off from pro
ducers in the agricultural sector
through arbitrary special levies, tax
farming, banditry, extortion and so
forth in the traditional economy,
exactions which the land reform brought
to a halt. The components of this vast
shadow-world of semi-legal practices
are simply not amenable to systematic
analysis, but together might easily
raise the 16.9% figure by half as much
again.
Some 44% of China's arable land
area was redistributed to poor and land
less peasants during the land reform,
the beneficiaries constituting some
60-70% of the farm population. 9 A por
tion of the gains in income was ex
tracted by the state for investment
purposes, both through taxation and
through its control over the terms of
trade with the industrial sector, still
leaving the poor and landless peasants
with a sizable increase in disposable
income, most of which was devoted to add
ed consumption. In 1952, the gains in
investment and mass consumption which can
be ascribed to this process were 13.1%
of national income, less than the
16.9% indicated above due to the re
duced share of the agricultural sector
in national income (48% in 1952 as
opposed to 65% in 1933).10 With a net
domestic product of 71.41 billion yuan
in 1952,11 the initial increase in in
come which the poor and landless pea
sants received as a consequence of the
land reform was 9.39 billion yuan.
l2
Of this, 5.04 billion yuan was extracted
by the state for investment purposes.
In this way the land reform made possi
ble both higher levels of mass consump
tion and higher levels of investment;
79
the increase in consumption is under
stated by this calculation because the
gains brought to the peasants by the
elimination of the arbitrary exactions
and so forth noted above have not been
included. Further, this calculation is
limited to the consequences of income
redistribution and does not take into
account the substantial increase in
income associated with the recovery
in output following 1949.
Changes in the pattern of consump
tion which the revolution made possible
also brought improvements in popular
welfare which have escaped the notice
of Liu and Yeh. As C.K. Yang has point
ed out,13 the elaborate ceremonial ex
penses which served to strengthen the
family as a unit in traditional China
played an important economic role. In
the absence of any public responsibi
lity for the individual in time of need,
illness or old age, the role of insuring
individual welfare naturally devolved
upon the family. In this light, the
extraordinary expenditures on such
rituals as wedding ceremonies
14
can
be understood as serving to create an
obligation on the part of the newlyweds
to insure and secure the existence of
the bridegroom's parents.
The importance of such expenditures
in family budgets is illuminated by the
study of a village in the Yangtze River
Valley undertaken by Fei Hsiao-tung,
who found that
For an average famiZy of fouro mem
assuming the average Zength
of Ufe to be fifty there
wiZZ be one ceremoniaZ occasion
every five yea:t's. The minimum ex
penses for these ceremonies are
estimated as foZZows: birth 30
marriage 500
and funeraZ 50 doUars. The aver
age annuaZ expense wiZZ be 50
doZZars. It amounts to one-seventh
of the who Ze annua Z expendi turoe . 15
Even among average peasant families
there was a substantial amount of saving
for these ceremonial expenses, usually in
the form of payments to a credit society.
The periodic expenditures, however, meant
80
dissaving, leaving net saving about
zero. After the revolution, public
assumption of the "insurance" responsi
bility for individual existence meant
that people no longer had to depend so
fully on their children in time of old
age or on their relatives in time of
adversity.16 Together with public pres
sures against elaborate display, this
paved the way for the erosion of cere
monial expenses, making it possible for
rural households to increase other con
sumption and, to some extent, to in
crease saving as well.
As rental income, actual or imputed,
absorbed approximately of one-half of
the net value added on agricultural land
in traditional China,17 and as some
44% of China's arable land was redistri
buted in the land reform, the scope for
raising both consumption and investment
in the manner outlined above awas con
siderable. The data in table one pro
vide a concrete illustration of how
the redistribution affected incomes
differentially according to class.
TABLE 1. PER CAPITA INCOHE OF PEASANTS
IN HUNAN PROVINCE
Income, 1952 yuan 1936 1952 1956
Per capitaa
poor peasants
middle peasants
rich peasants
landlords
69.71
59.2
78.8
118.8
127. 3
70.44 83.2
83.5
86.2
102.6
75. 3
aListed in the source as "per household,"
an evident error. Source: Nai-ruenn Chen,
Chinese Economic Statistics, hereafter
referred to as CES, (Chicago, 1967),
433, from data published by the Hunan
Statistical Bureau.
While the breakdown for 1952 would, if
available, be more directly germane, the
effects of the land reform are also re
flected in the 1956 figures. These show
an increase, compared with 1936, of
roughly 40% in poor peasant income, 10%
in middle peasant incomes, and declines
in rich peasant and landlord incomes. As
the first two classes constituted approx
imately 65% and 25% respectively of the
farm population, and as changes in
consumption paralleled the changes
in income (although some increase
in saving did take place), the material
improvement in the conditions of by far
the better part of the rural population
is clear.
I
Once again, the improvement in in
come or consumption clearly understates
the real gain in welfare. It is not
feasible to put dollar (or yuan) values
on the survival to maturity of a greater
number of children which the raising of
family incomes above marginal physical
subsistence levels made possible. Con
trary to the dictates of "welfare"
economics, which maintains neutrality
in the matter (interpersonal welfare
comparisons are said to be meaningless),
raising the incomes of the poor adds
more to welfare than raising the incomes
of the wealthy. Moreover, the elimina
tion of banditry, the wiping out of
contagious diseases, the assumption of
public responsibility not to permit
starvation, the expansion of educational
and occupational opportunities and so
forth brought enormous gains in welfare
which are not precisely quantifiable. It
is clear, however, that the value of
public services in China, as in under
developed countries generally, is typi
cally understated. The increase in
China's primary school enrollment
alone, for example, was more than
60 million students in the
1950s.l8 When valued in terms of
domestic factor prices, the method used
by Liu and Yeh, the increase in educa
tional services consumed appears small,
because teachers' salaries, the cost
of facilities and so forth are low.
But for foreigners to appreciate the
value of these services, it is more
proper to value them in terms of their
cost abroad. If primary education costs
in the area of $1,000 per pupil in the
United States, then the increase in
primary educational services consumed
in China in the 1950s is worth about
I
U.S. $60 billion. This is close to
China's entire national income accor
ding to the conventional methods of
comparing incomes internationally.
While this calculation is admittedly
-,.2ut.
,
I
very rough, it points up the extent to
which the value of public services in
i
China has been understated in the ortho
dox treatments.
By glossing over the improvements
in welfare which the advent of a social
ist order brought to China, and by
failing to break down the changes in
income and consumption on a class basis,
Liu and Yeh have managed to present a
seriously distorted image of the per
formance of the Chinese economy as it
affected individual consumption and wel
fare in the 1950s. In addition, by treat
ing investment as something merely
opposed to consumption, obscuring the
fact that investment is a necessary con
dition for the expansion of consumption
over time, they have further misrepre
sented reality. In this they are joined
by Eckstein. One indicator of the im
provement in rural consumption is the
level of retail sales of goods in vil
lages, shown below in table two. While
sales figures include producer or in
vestment goods, these constituted only
about 14% of the total between 1953 and
1956;19 the remainder indicates the rise
in rural consumption.
TABLE 2. RETAIL SALES OF GOODS IN VILLAGES
.AND IN THE ECONOMY AS A WHOLE (in billions
of yuan)
Retail Sales
Year in Villages
1950
1952 15.52
1953 18.38
1954 20.83
1955 25.60
1956 28.27
1957
1958
Total Retail
Sales in Society
17.06
27.68
34.80
38.11
39.22
46.10
47.42
54.80
Source: Shigeru Ishikawa, National Income
and Capital Formation in Mainland China
(Tokyo, 1965), 177 and 180.
The point that investment promotes
consumption is so evident that it hardly
seems worth belaboring it. But the fact
remains that the orthodoxy in Chinese eco
nomic studies in the United States ob
scures it systematically as inconsistent
with the malevolent image of Chinese
81
-
communism it tries to project. Table
three might be considered as well as
the evidence offered above, therefore,
as one more indicator of the extent to
which consumption was promoted by the
high level of investment. The data
show that the rising output of producer
goods (increasing investment) was accom
panied by a sizeable expansion in the
output of consumer goods.
TABLE 3. INDUSTRIAL OUTPUT IN CHINA,
1949-1957 / Gross value of industrial
output at 1952 prices (millions of
yuan)
Producer Consumer
Year goods goods Total
1949 3,730 10,290 14,020
1950 5,650 13,470 19,120
1951 8,500 17,850 26,350
1952 12,220 22,110 34,330
1953 16,680 28,020 44,700
1954 19,990 31,980 51,970
1955 22,890 31,980 54,870
1956 32,040 38,320 70,360
1957 37,940 40,450 78,390
Source: CES, 210, from State Statistical
Bureau, comp., Ten Great Years (Peking,
1960).
While the figures immediately above
refer to industrial output available
for consumption and investment in the
economy as a whole, the preceding dis
cussion has focused on income and con
sumption in the agricultural sector.
In the industrial sector, the imposi
tion of controls over private industry,
controls which limited the return to
capital, and the eventual socializa
tion of industry had redistributive
effects which paralleled those of the
land reform in the agricultural sector.
TIle reduction in and eventual elimina
tion of the capital share of national
income swelled the income and consump
tion of the needier portion, the great
er portion, of the urban popUlation:
those who worked for a living. At
the same time, the taxation of private
enterprises and the profit remittances
of public ones redirected to the nation-
al budget a portion of the income flows
which had previously sustained luxury
consumption, where they could then be
turned to public investment. The analogy
to the agricultural sector is exact:
higher consumption for the majority of
the people accompanied the higher in
vestment levels attained by the start
of the First Five Year Plan.
Further evidence contradicting the
Liu-Yeh assertion that depressed
living standards accompanied the high
investment levels appears in table
four below.
TABLE 4. HAJOR CONSUMER GOODS CONSUHED
ANNUALLY PER WORKER, SHANGHAI
Commodity 1929-30 1956
Rice, kilos 120.04 135.37
Pork, kilos 4.89 8.10
Poultry, kilos 0.38 1. 35
Fishery products, 5.08 13.70
kilos
Eggs, units 22.20 84.23
Vegetables, kilos 79.78 96.75
Sugar, kilos 1.20 2.08
Edible vegetable 6.29 5.10
oil, kilos
Edible animal oil 0.23 0.35
kilos
Cotton cloth, meters 6.43 14.00
Rubber footwear, 0.10 0.51
pairs
Leather footwear, 0.17 0.27
pairs
Socks, pairs 1.26 2.08
Source: CES, 440.
While these figures are for just one city,
the case is a significant one, as close
to one-half of China's industrial out
put was produced in Shanghai prior to the
revolution. These figures do not reflect,
moreover, the improvements in housing,
working conditions, medical care, educa
tion and other services which transformed
urban life after 1949. Robert Barnett's
description of a worker relatively
better off than most others in Shanghai,
1936, can serve as a standard for compar
ison. 20
Barnett describes a Chinese tobacco
worker (in industry) who worked 9 1/2
hours per day and received Chin. $14.68
per month. This met about half his family
82
I
I
expenses. His wife worked in a silk
gains in real income were substantial.
reeling establishment 11 hours a day
for Chin. $10.90 per month. One of his
TABLE 5. AVERAGE ANNUAL WAGE PER WORKER
daughters, 16 years old, worked 11 1/2
AND EMPLOYEE (in current yuan)
hours each day in a cotton-spinning
mill for Chin. $10.05 per month. His
younger daughter, 9 years old and small
for her age, accompanied his wife to
work, and was permitted to serve as
an apprentice in return for her food.
For 11 hoUl's eaah day this tot
stood upon a raised platform
wielding a small brush in a
steaming brazier full of boiling
aoaoons. holding his fam
ily together in the one room
whiah they this worker
believed himself a luaky man . ...
The swn of his family's aollea
tive inaome in 1936 amounted to
Ch. $35.63 each month in ter.ms
of Ameriaan about U.S.
$8.90. This was rather more than
most of his working associates
aould boast. 21
Barnett's description is particularly
revealing because 1936 was a year of
relatively high wages and because this
worker's circumstances were much better
than the average. Real wages were to fall
steadily in Shanghai in the next four
years to 55% of the 1936 level in 1940,22
when food expenditures came to absorb
69% of the average worker's budget,
compared to 53% in 1929. 23 Improvements
in the conditions of such working class
families which escape the itemization
in table four include the introduction
of a standard eight-hour working day
after the revolution and the substitu
tion of schooling for child labor.
For the industrial sector as well
as for the agricultural sector unmistak
able evidence points to the favorable im
pact on income and consumption made by
the high level of investment and the
attendant increases in national output.
Table five shows the change in wages of
those employed in the industrial sector
between 1952 and 1959. These figures are
presented in terms of current yuan while
prices rose about 10% during this inter
val. But still it can be seen that the
Year Average wage
1952 446
1953 496
,
1954 519
1955 534
1956 610
1957 637
\
!
1958 656
1959 689 (approx.)
Source: CES, 492-493.
The data presented in the tables
above reveal the material improvement
in income and consumption which the clear
majority and neediest segment of the
Chinese population experienced as a
result of the socialist revolution.
Further, the improvements in education,
public health and other social ser
vices were so extensive as to transform
living conditions, making marginal com
parisons with previous conditions of
dubious validity. In short, the im
provement in social welfare wrought by
the Chinese revolution was so great
as to raise the question how it could
have been so misrepresented in the ortho
dox analyses of the Chinese economy.
This question is compounded by the
treatment afforded China's high invest
ment rate, a treatment which stands in
sharp contradiction to some basic pro
positions of development economics.
Scholarly investigation of the
problems of economic development is
essentially a postwar phenomenon. In the
quarter-century over which the disci
pline has evolved, Western scholars
have, almost without exception, attached
primary importance to raising the share
of national income devoted to savings
and investment. Foregoing some present
consumption will make possible more-than
commensurate increases in production
and consumption in the future. While
none of the principal figures in Chinese
economic studies in the United States are
primarily development economists, their
failure to take this into account is
83
..
striking. In what can only be attributed
to the class bias of Western scholar
ship, the outstanding performance of
the Chinese economy in raising the
national savings-investment ratio has
been treated by the orthodoxy as some
thing worthy only of opprobrium. The
posttive consequences for economic devel
()pment of savings and investment have
been minimized, while the opportunity
costs in terms of current consumption
sacrificed have been blown up out of all
proportion and misrepresented.
The opposition between consumption
and investment appears only under static
conditions. Over time, investment is not
only not opposed to consumption, it is
a necessary condition for its increase.
Even in the short run, the increased
production of investment goods does
not require a reduction in the output
of necessities if luxury consumption
can be sacrificed in its stead. This
was the case in China. The change in
property relations wrought by the land
reform in the agricultural sector of
the economy and by increasing sociali
zation in the industrial sector redirected
income flows which had sustained luxury
consumption to the financing of both
higher levels of investment and higher
consumption for those most in need. In
this way the long-range development
needs of the economy and the immediate
and pressing needs for the alleviation
of poverty were reconciled in the
Chinese revolution.
FOOTNOTES
1. See the data presented in
tables one through five.
2. See, for example, the works by
Eckstein and Liu and Yeh cited below.
3. Percentages derived from Liu
and Yeh, 68.
4. His implicit assumption that
consumer sovereignty governs the share
of national income devoted to investment
in the West is also incorrect.
5. Report in the New York Times,
March 19, 1971, of a study made by
Herman P. Miller, director of the Census
Bureau's population studies, and Roger
A. Herriot, a bureau statistician.
6. The comparison with the earlier
period, as opposed to the time just
prior to the revolution, makes it poss
ible to circumvent the economic distor
tions associated with the civil war
and World War II.
7. The land reform was carried out
extensively in the liberated areas
prior to the establishment of the
People's Republic on October 1, 1949,
but spread over most of the countryside
between 1950 and 1952.
8. These and the following percen
tages are based on my own calculations.
Cf. Victor D. Lippit, "Land Reform in
China: The Contribution of Institu
tional Change to Financing Economic
Development," (Unpublished Ph. D. disser
tation, Yale University, 1971).
9. Po Yi-po, "Three Years of
Achievements of the People's Republic
of China," in New China's Economic
Achievements, 1949-1952, compo China
Committee for the Promotion of Inter
national trade (Peking, 1952), 151-152.
10. Percentages derived from Liu
and Yeh, 66.
11. Ibid.
12. This and the following figures
are from Lippit, op. cit.
13. C.K. Yang, Chinese Communist
Society: The Family and the Village
(Cambridge, Mass, 1965), ch. 2.
14. John L. Buck, in Land Utiliza
tion in China (New York, 1968), 19,
observes that wedding expenses were apt
to absorb four months' income of middle
peasants and more than the annual in
come of hired laborers (many of whom
could not, as a consequence, afford
to marry).
15. Peasant Life in China: A Field
Study of Country Life in the Yangtze
Valley (London, 1939), 132.
16. Even after the land reform
widows and others lacking labor power
were allowed to retain (or obtained in
the redistribution) a small amount of
land, the rental from which served as
their support. 3-5% of China's land
area was rented in this way. With the
gradual increase in the degree of
collectivization in agriculture, wel
fare responsibilities became increasing
ly socialized. Every commune was re
quired by regulation to use part of its
84
------------------------------------------------
l
income for welfare purposes.
17. Lippit, op. cit.
18. Leo Orleans, "An Over-view of
China's Education," in Chinese So ciety
Under Communism, ed. William T. Liu
(New York, 1967), 337.
19. Percentage derived from data
in Shigeru Ishikawa, National Income
and Capital Formation in Mainland China
(Tokyo, 1965), 177.
20. Economic Shanghai: Hostage to
Politics 1937-41 (New York, 1941),
42-43.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
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Correction
The last issue of the Bulletin
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Co......lc.llo f
December 15, 1971
Professor Mark Selden
Dr. Marilyn Young
Professor Edward Friedman
Professor Jonathan Mirsky
Professor Franz Schurmann
Friends:
I have not recently read anything
so ghoulish as the treatment of the late
John M.H. Lindbeck by someone named
David Horowitz in the Summer-Fall 1971
issue of the Bulletin of Concerned
Asian Scholars. My comments are not di
rected to the substance of the largely
derivative account of foundation finan
cing of international studies in the
United States. I accept that in some
circles it is still considered a "contri
bution" to warn earnestly, before one
throws an egg into the pan to make an
omelet, that 1) it is incorrect to
throw the pan on the egg, 2) the



a critical review
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chicken which laid the egg was raised
on a capitalist tarin, and 3) making an
omelet is an organized social activity.
My cautionary point is simply this: If
scholars are (deliberately?) unaware of
the reality of such recent and close
contemporaries--John Lindbeak was a raPe
selfless man" of i11VT/ense pubUa and pri
vate morality" gentle and just" a
friend and helper to innumerable per
sons in our field" old and young and
all along the politiaal speatPUm--how
can they serve as guides to the
thoughts and actions of other men,
past and present, in distant coun
tries? By what twist of the mind can I
trust you the second time when you have
cheated me of the truth at our first
meeting?
Yours sincerely,
Albert Feuerwerker
Center for Chinese
Studies
Ann Arbor, Michigan
VOL. XVI 1971-72
New Era of Repression
Marcuse
A Critique of the Women's Movement
Dixon Reply by Leffler and Gillespie
Marxism and Modern Economics Horowitz
Swan Harlem and Detroit Race Riots
and many other articles
87
Conl..ibalo...
Christine White is a graduate student in Vietnamese studies at Stanford and is spend
ing this year in Hong Kong; GOrdon White, also a graduate student, is a specialist in
modern Chinese history and politics. / Ngo Vinh Long is a graduate student at Harvard
specializing in Vietnamese history. / Herbert Bix is a professor of history at the
University of Massachusetts-Boston and teaches modern Japanese history. / David Wilson
is a graduate student in modern Chinese politics at Washington University-St. Louis. /
Keith Buchanan is Professor and head of the Geography Department of Victoria University,
Wellington, New Zealand; he has published many books including The Transformation of
the Chinese Earth (1970). / Frank BaldJin is a professor at Columbia University and
teaches about modern Korea. / Victor Lippit teaches economics at the University of
California-Riverside.
Dear Friends,
Everyone knows that Vietnam is being reduced to a wasteland, the soil and rivers are
being chemically poisoned. It will take decades for them to become productive again, if
ever. The same defoliants which have caused the collapse of the Vietnamese ecology are
also responsible for the increase in birth defects.
COLLECTE VIETNAM has been set up to help end this horror. Every dollar contributed will
be forwarded by International Money Order directly to Mme. Nguyen Thi Binh, Minister of
Foreign Affairs of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam, at her
personal address in Pans. Absolutely no contributions will be used for administrative
purposes. These funds will be used to repair the damage done to the people and country
side of Vietnam. All the operating costs of COLLECTE VIETNAM are being covered by the
participating members in Montreal. The executive is composed of concerned Quebecois,
American refugees and Vietnamese patriots. We need your assistance through contributions
and through contacts to inform others. Please send donations by money order, post-dated
checks, or even cash, and pass along this address to your friends: COLLECTE VIETNAM,
C.P. 283 / Station Outremont / 154, Quebec / Canada.
[partial list of sponsors: Nick Auf der Maur (C.B.C.), Fred Branfman (Project Air War),
Michel Chartrand Conseil Central de la des Syndicats Nationaux),
Prof. Noam Chomsky (MIT),
Jean de Tilly, S.J., Prof.
Gabriel Kolko (York Univ.,
April-June 1972
The China Quarterly
Toronto), Prof. Jacques
Issue No. 50
Levesque (Univ. du
An international journal for the study of China
Prof. Sam Noumoff (HcGill),
Edgar Snow: Some Personal Reminiscences John S. Service
Dimitri Roussopoulos (edi
On the Making of U.S. China Policy, 19611969 James Thomson
tor, Our Generation), Paul
Chinese Attitudes Towards Nuclear Weapons
Jonathan Pollack
Sweezy (editor, Monthly
China and Indian Communism
Bhabani Sen Gupta
Ch'en Tu-hsiu's Incomplete Autobiography
Richard Kagan Review), Bernard Hergler
Rural Industry - A Traveller's View
Jon Sigurdson (lawyer, Prof.
Impressions of Language in China
Beverly Hong Fincher
Jean-Guy Vaillancourt
Comment Quarterly Chronicle and Documentation

Book Reviews (Univ. de Claire

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Editorial Office: Subscription Agents:
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nam), Prof. Robert Garry
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88