Connecting Histories: Decolonization and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, 1945-1962 9781503627406

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Connecting Histories

COL.:., WAP INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT SERIES

James G. Hershberg series editor Rebellious Satellite: Poland 1956 By Pawel Machcewicz /

Two Suns in the Heavens The Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy, 1962–1967 By Sergey Radchenko

The Soviet Union and the June 1967 Six Day War Edited by Yaacov Ro’i and Boris Morozov

Local Consequences of the Global Cold War Edited by Jeffrey A. Engel

Behind the Bamboo Curtain China, Vietnam, and the World beyond Asia Edited by Priscilla Roberts

Failed Illusions Moscow, Washington, Budapest, and the 1956 Hungarian Revolt By Charles Gati

Kim Il Sung in the Khrushchev Era Soviet-DPRK Relations and the Roots of North Korean Despotism, 1953–1964 By Balázs Szalontai

Confronting Vietnam Soviet Policy toward the Indochina Conflict, 1954–1963 By Ilya V. Gaiduk

Economic Cold War America’s Embargo against China and the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1949–1963 By Shu Guang Zhang

Brothers in Arms The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1945–1963 Edited by Odd Arne Westad

WOODROW WILSON CENTER PRESS STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Connecting Histories: Decolonization and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, 1945–1962 Edited by Christopher E. Goscha and Christian F. Ostermann

Woodrow Wilson Center Press Washington, DC Stanford University Press Stanford, CA

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Connecting histories : decolonization and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, 1945–1962 / edited by Christopher E. Goscha and Christian F. Ostermann. p. cm. — (Cold War International History Project series) Includes bibliographic references and index. ISBN 978-0-8047-6943-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Southeast Asia—History—1945– 2. Southeast Asia—Foreign relations. 3. Decolonization—Southeast Asia—History. 4. Cold War. 5. World politics, 1945–1955. 6. World politics–1955–1965. I. Goscha, Christopher E. II. Ostermann, Christian F. DS526.7.C656 2009 959.05′3—dc22 2009031467

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Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, established by Congress in 1968 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., is the living, national memorial to President Wilson. The Center is a nonpartisan institution of advanced research, supported by public and private funds, engaged in the study of national and world affairs. The Center establishes and maintains a neutral forum for free, open, and informed dialogue. The Center’s mission is to commemorate the ideals and concerns of Woodrow Wilson by providing a link between the world of ideas and the world of policy, by bringing a broad spectrum of individuals together to discuss important public policy issues, by serving to bridge cultures and viewpoints, and by seeking to find common ground. Conclusions or opinions expressed in Center publications and programs are those of the authors and speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Center staff, fellows, trustees, advisory groups, or any individuals or organizations that provide financial support to the Center. The Center is the publisher of The Wilson Quarterly and home of Woodrow Wilson Center Press, dialogue radio and television, and the monthly newsletter “Centerpoint.” For more information about the Center’s activities and publications, please visit us on the web at www.wilsoncenter.org. Lee H. Hamilton, President and Director Board of Trustees Joseph B. Gildenhorn, Chair Sander R. Gerber, Vice Chair Public members: James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress; Hillary R. Clinton, Secretary of State; G. Wayne Clough, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education; James Leach, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities; Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services; Archivist of the United States Private citizen members: Charles E. Cobb Jr., Robin Cook, Charles L. Glazer, Carlos M. Gutierrez, Susan Hutchison, Barry S. Jackson, Ignacio E. Sanchez

The Cold War International History Project

The Cold War International History Project was established by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in 1991. The project supports the full and prompt release of historical materials by governments on all sides of the Cold War and seeks to disseminate new information and perspectives on Cold War history emerging from previously inaccessible sources on the “the other side”—the former Communist world—through publications, fellowships, and scholarly meetings and conferences. The project publishes the Cold War International History Project Bulletin and a working paper series, and maintains a website, http://www.cwihp.org. At the Woodrow Wilson Center, the project is part of the History and Public Policy Program, directed by Christian F. Ostermann. The project is overseen by an advisory committee that is chaired by William Taubman (Amherst College), and includes Michael Beschloss; James H. Billington (Librarian of Congress); Warren I. Cohen (University of Maryland at Baltimore); John Lewis Gaddis (Yale University); James G. Hershberg (George Washington University); Samuel F. Wells Jr. (Woodrow Wilson Center); and Sharon Wolchik (George Washington University). The Cold War International History Project is supported by the Henry Luce Foundation (New York), the Korea Foundation (Seoul), the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (Chicago), and the Ratiu Family Foundation (London).

Contents

Foreword Nayan Chanda Introduction: Connecting Decolonization and the Cold War in Southeast Asia Christopher E. Goscha and Christian F. Ostermann

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I. Western Trajectories into Southeast Asia 1. Recasting Vietnam: The Bao Dai Solution and the Outbreak of the Cold War in Southeast Asia Mark Atwood Lawrence

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2. Containment and the Challenge of Non-Alignment: The Cold War and U.S. Policy toward Indonesia, 1950–1952 Richard Mason

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3. Avoiding the “Rank of Denmark”: Dutch Fears about Loss of Empire in Southeast Asia Anne L. Foster

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4. Processing Decolonization: British Strategic Analysis of Conflict in Vietnam and Indonesia, 1945–1950 Martin Thomas

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II. Internationalist Communist Intersections in the Region 5. Soviet Cold War Strategy and Prospects of Revolution in South and Southeast Asia Ilya V. Gaiduk

123

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6. Bridging Revolution and Decolonization: The “Bandung Discourse” in China’s Early Cold War Experience Chen Jian

137

7. From Cheering to Volunteering: Vietnamese Communists and the Coming of the Cold War, 1940–1951 Tuong Vu

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III. Southeast Asian Alignment and Non-Alignment 8. Choosing between the Two Vietnams: 1950 and Southeast Asian Shifts in the International System Christopher E. Goscha

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9. Indonesia’s Diplomatic Revolution: Lining Up for Non-Alignment, 1945–1955 Samuel E. Crowl

238

10. Malaysia during the Early Cold War Era: The War in Indochina and Malaya, 1946–1963 Danny Wong Tze Ken

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11. Phibun, the Cold War, and Thailand’s Foreign Policy Revolution of 1950 Daniel Fineman

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12. Southeast Asian Perceptions of the Domino Theory Ang Cheng Guan

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IV. Cultural Connections: Religion, Society, and Civilization 13. Ludu Aung Than: Nu’s Burma during the Cold War Michael W. Charney

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14. Lawan dan kawan (Friends and Foes): Indonesian Islam and Communism during the Cold War (1945–1960) Rémy Madinier

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15. The Diplomacy of Personalism: Civilization, Culture, and the Cold War in the Foreign Policy of Ngo Dinh Diem Edward Miller

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Bibliography

403

Contributors

427

Index

433

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Foreword Nayan Chanda

The euphoria of that cold, dry November day in 1989 when a cheering crowd brought down the Berlin Wall has inevitably melted away. But for historians and students of Cold War history, the day marked the beginning of a new era that has only improved with passing years. Not only have the long-hidden secrets of the Cold War years held in Soviet bloc archives slowly surfaced to be examined by eager historians, but a similar opening has also marked the Chinese, Vietnamese, and other archives. The results have been a spectacular blossoming of Cold War histories or, more accurately, “new Cold War history.” Documents holding secrets of the past half-century have allowed historians to peek into the inner workings and thought processes of the Soviet bloc Communist parties and their Western opponents. The plethora of new information has inevitably resulted in a significant revision of the known history, casting a very different light on the roles played by such various actors as Josef Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Sutan Sjharir. This volume is an exciting addition to the growing crop of New Cold War history. This volume stands out for its original and fresh approach, which the editors have called “geohistorical.” Taking advantage of the archival materials on three continents, the contributors to this volume have been able to cast their accounts in a multidimensional perspective, combining the insights and information found in the communist archives with other national archives. They show how ideological and national struggles overlapped and intersected at difNayan Chanda is editor of YaleGlobal Online and the author of Bound Together: How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers, and Warriors Shaped Globalization (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), and Brother Enemy: The War after the War (New York: Harcourt, 1986).

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ferent points in time and weave a fascinating tapestry unavailable until now. What emerges in these rich chapters confirms some suspicions, lays to rest many myths, and exposes the reality of narrow nationalistic considerations behind international revolutionary rhetoric. Surprisingly, the authors also find contrarian evidence of how some communist leaders, long believed to be pragmatic nationalists, were actually zealous revolutionaries. The volume also confirms what has been known from nonarchival sources: that despite public rhetoric, Stalin had little confidence in the prospects of communist revolution in Southeast Asia. Even though he entrusted the Chinese Communist Party with leading the internationalist revolution in Asia, promotion of world revolution was far from their main concern. Vietnamese communists have been widely portrayed as nationalist first, but Tuong Vu shows that senior leaders of the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) not only cheered but signed up to serve on the internationalist communist front in Southeast Asia. Ho Chi Minh privately admitted that dissolution of the ICP was a sham designed to calm non-communist worries about the communist core of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The essays in this volume also throw new light on the agonizing dilemma faced by Asia’s nationalist movements when confronted with the choice between imperialist and colonial powers and the newly rising non-democratic communist movement. As Christopher Goscha demonstrates in his fascinating essay, while Ho-led Vietnam and Phibun Songkhram’s Thailand threw in their lots with opposite camps, non-communist Asian leaders—from Burma, Indonesia, and India—were thrown into a quandary. Not only did they view with dismay the choice between colonial oppression and communist authoritarianism, but they were also deeply fearful of a new conflict between the two camps. Out of this concern arose the search for a third way. Chen Jian shows how agile Chinese communist dialecticians successfully turned decolonization their way by adopting a policy of “coexistence” with the emerging “third-way” practitioners of the decolonizing world by stressing a shared history of Western colonial exploitation. Christopher E. Goscha and Christian F. Ostermann richly deserve our congratulations and deepest gratitude for producing the remarkable Connecting Histories: Decolonization and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, 1945–1962, which mines the treasures from the newly opened communist archives and national records, offering a unique, multidimensional account of a key turning point in modern Asia.

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Introduction: Connecting Decolonization and the Cold War in Southeast Asia Christopher E. Goscha and Christian F. Ostermann

The idea for this volume grew out of a panel organized for the annual congress of the European Association of Southeast Asian Studies (Euroseas) held in Paris, France, in September 2004. The panel was entitled “Between Imperial Retreat and the Cold War in Asia: Early Western and Southeast Asian Responses (1949–1962).” The principal idea was to try to bring together scholars working on different countries and using different sources and approaches in order to get a variety of “takes” on the connections between two historical phenomena: the Cold War and decolonization in Southeast Asia. Another, equally important goal of this conference and book project was to bring into that discussion scholars from and working in the region, something which is perhaps not as common as it should be in the field of international and Cold War history. Thanks to the generous support provided by the EuroAsia Foundation, the Cold War International History Project, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Institut d’Asie Orientale in Lyon, we were able to do this. Collaboration with scholars from the region is a crucial step in building a truly international history of Southeast Asia. Working as an international team, we sought to examine how decolonization and the Cold War intersected in complex ways in Southeast Asia. Most studies tend to treat the Cold War and decolonization in Southeast Asia as two separate historical processes. This separation occurs in terms of both dividing the process of decolonization from that of the Cold War thematically and analyzing the question from either a Western-oriented, mainly American perspective, or from a Southeast Asian if not national one. Rather than focusing on the “West” or the “rest,” or on the Cold War at the expense of decolonization, the contributors to this volume chose to focus on connections—various intersections between de-

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colonization and the Cold War—and they do so from different geographical vantage points in the making of Southeast Asian international history. Connections between these two narratives are thus at the heart of this volume, for they help illuminate historical linkages in the international system running horizontally from East to West, vertically from North to South, transversally across the South itself and in various thematic ways as the chapters in this book demonstrate using new sources and approaches.1 Four principal historical trajectories emerge from the chapters in this volume and serve as a compass for identifying connections developed by the authors. First, the historical phenomena of decolonization and the Cold War influenced the global “South” most profoundly in Asia. The Japanese overthrow of Western empires across Southeast Asia during World War II meant that the historical process of decolonization started in Asia before spreading across the South along a horizontal axis to Africa. Ho Chi Minh and Sukarno both announced the independence of their countries in August 1945 as the Japanese empire crumbled but before the French and the Dutch could reassert theirs. Undefeated in Europe, the British would interpret decolonization differently. India and Burma would obtain their independence through political rather than military means shortly after the war, but it would take more time and violence before the British decolonized in Malaya, as Danny Wong demonstrates in his contribution. Second, the Cold War also first entered the “Southern” part of the international system via Asia, especially through China and then Korea and Vietnam. The Chinese communist victory of 1949 not only reinforced the development of a Eurasian “internationalist” corridor running from Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe to the South China Sea, but it also intertwined with the various strands of decolonization of the region already underway. While this connection was certainly not absent in Africa or the Middle East, the Cold War and decolonization collided most intensely at first in Asia. Even as Stalin initially viewed Asia as a secondary Cold War staging ground, he reinforced this revolutionary shift along a Eurasian trajectory by handing over direction of the Asian revolution to Mao in 1949–1950.2 Meanwhile the Americans stepped in to hold the line against a perceived communist deluge into Southeast Asia. This would have a wide range of implications for South and Southeast Asian leaders from 1950 onward. As Tuong Vu shows in his chapter, the arrival of the Cold War served Vietnamese communist interests better than some have thought, not only in terms of forcing France’s hand in Indochina but also in terms of pushing through revolutionary social change for the Vietnamese communists. Viewed from another vantage point, however, this interfacing of the Cold War and decolonization in increasingly intense ways was exactly what Indonesian,

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Introduction

Burmese, and Indian non-communist leaders did not want (see chapter eight on India’s dilemma when it came to choosing between the two Vietnams). Third, it is too often forgotten that there was nothing necessarily “inevitable” about decolonization, as Anne Foster shows in chapter three and Tony Stockwell has warned elsewhere.3 The Dutch and the French returned to Southeast Asia determined to rebuild their colonial states and erase humiliating defeats in 1940. Empire was seen as an important instrument to ensuring their continued role as viable and respected powers in the international system. Charles de Gaulle put it aptly to the French Consultative Assembly in May 1945: “Ladies and gentlemen, let it never be forgotten: Without the empire, France would be but a liberated country. But thanks to the Empire, France is among the winners.”4 It is also worth recalling how the intersection of the Cold War and decolonization prolonged or hastened decolonization on the diplomatic front. Thanks to the Cold War and the fact that the Vietnamese nationalist movement was directed by a communist party, the French were able to gain American support and prolong their colonial presence in Indochina, as Mark Lawrence shows in chapter one. In Indonesia the opposite development resulted. As Samuel Crowl demonstrates in chapter nine, the Dutch lost their colonial claim to Indonesia on the diplomatic front to non-communist Indonesian nationalists when the United States, fearful of communist exploitation of anticolonialism, pressured the Dutch to recognize the reality of decolonization. Fourth, caught in the middle, non-communist and newly decolonized Southeast Asian countries such as India, Burma, and Indonesia began to plot a “third way,” a more neutral path consciously cutting horizontally across the global “South.”5 This third way was a reaction to the expansion of the Cold War into the Asian region, as well as out of desire to end colonialism and continued Western intervention. The wars in Vietnam and Korea, for example, caused the Indian government to intervene in the search for negotiated solutions, reaching out to support Zhou Enlai’s efforts to neutralize Southeast Asia and Indochina at the Geneva Conference of 1954.6 The first conference of what came to be known as “non-aligned” countries, held in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955, grew out of similar Indian and Indonesian efforts to find a non-communist, neutralist solution to the wars in Korea and Vietnam that precluded the continued meddling of Western countries with neo-imperial ambitions. Symbolic of the Southern shift of decolonization, the Bandung meeting was officially referred to as the Afro-Asian Conference. It was also at this point, as Chen Jian argues in chapter six, that the Chinese communists—considering themselves both Southern and “internationalist”—sought to turn decolonization their way by adopting a policy of “coexistence” with the emerging non-aligned countries in the South based on a shared history of opposing Western colonial exploitation.

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Christopher E. Goscha and Christian F. Ostermann

Bringing out these connections in an intelligible way in more than a dozen chapters is admittedly a very daunting task. It is necessary to give the essays an order capable of teasing out the different ways that decolonization and the Cold War intersected along different national and cultural trajectories in the making of the postcolonial international system in Southeast Asia. To do this, we have organized the chapters along four linkages: • • • •

Western trajectories Internationalist communist linkages Southeast Asian alignments and non-alignments Cultural connections: religion, society, and civilization

These “connective categories” are by no means mutually exclusive and can overlap in time and space, as they most certainly did at the time. For example, although Ngo Dinh Diem’s Republic of Vietnam and Phibun Songkhram’s Thailand adopted foreign policies of an anticommunist nature, they simultaneously and genuinely shared the anticolonialism of their less-aligned Asian “brethren,” such as India. Edward Miller and Daniel Fineman make this point, respectively, in chapters fifteen and eleven. One non-communist Vietnamese diplomat intimately knowledgeable of Thai affairs remarked once to co-editor Christopher Goscha that Phibun Songkhram had confided to him in private inmid 1954 that the Vietnamese defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 was one of the happiest days of his life. We have no reason not to believe him, even though Phibun had already allied Thailand in a “revolutionary” relationship with the United States. The structure of the book is designed to show how these themes overlapped, intersected, and connected at different points in time and space. Our hope is that this more geohistorical approach to the question can help readers visualize these linkages in a wider framework than is often the case. After all, it could be argued that Phibun’s unprecedented alliance of Thailand with the Americans in 1950 was as revolutionary as Truong Chinh’s decision to link Vietnam so closely to a communist world based out of Moscow (compare Daniel Fineman and Tuong Vu’s conclusions). And these connections did not just move in geopolitical ways. As part three reveals, decolonization and the Cold War also intersected in the making of culture, society, and religion in Southeast Asia; these forces, in turn, influenced decolonization and the Cold War. Temporally, we have limited our book to the period between the end of World War II in 1945 and 1962. Admittedly, 1962 is something of an arbitrary date. We could not cover the entire period of the Cold War or decolonization in one volume much less a single conference. This year seemed nevertheless to constitute a reasonable break-off point, as 1962 marked the end of the Sec-

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Introduction

ond Geneva Conference on Laos and the further intensification of the conflict in Vietnam, among other things. Given the richness of the sources and the interests of our authors, we found it much more useful to concentrate on the earlier period in order to provide a more focused account. The first section of the volume, “Western Trajectories into Southeast Asia,” starts us off by considering how Western powers—the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands—reacted to the intersection between decolonization and the Cold War. Mark Lawrence shows how the arrival of the Cold War in the late 1940s allowed the French to recast their neo-colonial Bao Dai solution as an integral part of the anticommunist struggle, a cause now worthy of American support. The Americans found it harder to deal with the newly decolonized state of Indonesia whose leaders favored a non-aligned approach to the coming of the Cold War instead of containment. Richard Mason takes up this matter in chapter two. Focusing on the Dutch, Anne Foster suggests in chapter three that the loss of the Indies to Indonesia was indeed a traumatic event; however, the arrival of the Cold War provided a timely explanation for their departure and assigned them a new role in the global Cold War. Martin Thomas takes up the question from an original angle in chapter four by considering how British intelligence services “processed” decolonization and the Cold War in Vietnam and Indonesia and the impact this had (or didn’t have) on British decision making after World War II. Part two takes up the question from the “other side” by looking at “International Communist Intersections in the Region.” Ilya Gaiduk argues convincingly in chapter five that while the Soviets may have confided leadership of the internationalist revolution in Asia to the Chinese, this does not mean that they were bent on promoting world revolution. Stalin had little confidence in the prospects of communist revolution for decolonizing Southeast Asia, contrary to what many have written since then. Chen Jian comes at the question from another angle by examining how Chinese communists developed a foreign policy “bridging” decolonization and revolution. Nowhere was this better seen than in the Chinese ideological discourse on Bandung, which allowed Chinese internationalists to present themselves as members of the emerging South. Tuong Vu breaks with the reigning interpretation of Vietnamese communists’ attitude toward the coming of the Cold War by arguing in chapter seven that ranking leaders of the Indochinese Communist Party not only cheered but signed up to serve on the internationalist communist front in Southeast Asia. It legitimated their cause and allowed them to push through radical changes on the inside. Caught between these two trajectories was a Southeast Asian region torn between alignment and non-alignment and this as decolonization was still in full-

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swing. In his chapter, Christopher Goscha shows the degree to which the Cold War choice between Bao Dai and Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnam pointed up major shifts in the international system. The Democratic Republic of Vietnam chose to ally itself with the communist bloc, whereas non-communist Asian countries such as Indonesia, Burma, and India steered a neutral course when pressed by the blocs to recognize one of the two Vietnams. Samuel Crowl examines this further in chapter nine on Indonesia’s “diplomatic revolution” of a non-aligned kind. Danny Wong, on the other hand, shows in chapter ten how the war over Vietnam deeply influenced Malaysian diplomacy leading it to lean to one side in the international system, an anticommunist one. Daniel Fineman and Ang Cheng Guan make similar connections in chapters eleven and twelve. In the case of Thailand, Fineman reveals the extent to which Phibun Songkhram revolutionized Thai foreign policy by aligning Bangkok’s foreign policy closely to that of the United States. Ang Cheng Guan considers how non-communist Southeast Asian governments perceived the domino theory in the 1950 and 1960s. Decolonization and the Cold War also connected in cultural and religious ways, something that has only begun to be studied in the international history of Southeast Asia. And yet it is one of the most important connections of the time. Focusing on Burma in the 1940s and 1950s, Michael Charney shows in chapter thirteen the extent to which literature and the arts became an essential component of Prime Minister U Nu’s policies during the height of the Cold War. Charney also shows how U Nu linked Buddhism to his attempt to unite Burma against perceived communist threats. Rémy Madinier focuses in chapter fourteen on a similar connection during the Cold War in Indonesia, this time between Islam and republicans mobilized against the perceived communist threat between 1945 and 1960. Edward Miller concludes part three with an innovative essay examining how “the diplomacy of personalism”—and not Catholicism—is essential to understanding how Ngo Dinh Diem, the leader of the Republic of Vietnam, used culture and notions of civilization in his Asian diplomacy during the Cold War. Taken together, these four trajectories intersect to provide, we think, an original perspective on the international history of Southeast Asia during the high period of decolonization and the Cold War (1945–1962).

New Historiographical Trajectories The historiography on decolonization and the Cold War in Asia is simply massive, a subject in and of itself. Much of it has been important to us in putting this volume together, as we hope the bibliography demonstrates. Both fields have certainly changed rapidly in the last two decades.

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Introduction

Cold War history has seen dramatic change since the early 1990s. With the end of the Cold War, the largely peaceful implosion of the communist regimes in East-Central Europe, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and the ensuing opening of the former communist-world archives, historians have sought to internationalize the history of the Cold War. Against the backdrop of an era of unprecedented openness and declassification of U.S. government records (during the 1990s), access to the innermost chambers of secrets of the former ruling communist parties from Moscow to Berlin has allowed historians to recast the Cold War in ways unthinkable beforehand. The narrative could now be reconstructed from an international perspective, on a multiarchival basis, overcoming the onesided perspectives that had dominated scholarship in the East and West.7 The sudden end of the Cold War confrontation posed the challenge to historians to write its history knowing the outcome, yet it also allowed them to escape the ideological and political parameters that the Cold War set while it was ongoing. After all, in the Soviet bloc much of the political history was in lip service of the party-state, and the scholarly debate in the United States was all too often a projection of the political and politicized debate over American foreign policy by historiographical means. The “new Cold War history,” to borrow John Lewis Gaddis’s term, shifted the old debate centered on the question of who was to blame for the rise of the Cold War to rethinking some of the fundamental dynamics of the international history of the second half of the twentieth century: Aside from recasting the Cold War with greater complexity, the “new Cold War history” emphasized, for example, the role of ideas and ideology and the importance of “smaller powers.”8 Chapters in this volume respond to this renewal of Cold War studies for Asia. Perhaps the most important recent development in the availability of new sources on the Cold War is the cautious opening by the Chinese government of its foreign ministry archives. Until the 1980s, China scholars in the West had to travel to Hong Kong or Taiwan and rely upon contemporary newspapers, interviews, or Western intelligence estimates of uncertain accuracy to study Beijing’s policies. Since then, the policy of reform and opening in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has resulted in a more flexible political and academic environment, leading to relaxation of the extremely rigid criteria for releasing party documents. Although China has passed several archive-related laws and regulations since the early 1980s, setting up (among other things) a thirty-year period for declassifying archival records, until recently, it had still been all but impossible for scholars, both Chinese and foreign, to gain direct access to archival materials of critical importance to post-1949 PRC foreign relations. Scholars had to rely upon “selected documents” published internally or officially to study China’s Cold War history. In the 1990s, scholars began

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to gain access to original documents at various provincial and regional archives. Most useful among these materials are Chinese Communist Party central committee papers that were relayed to provincial and regional party committees and therefore have been kept at related provincial and regional archives.9 Much to the surprise of the scholarly community, and apparently after a struggle between the ministry and party officials, in January 2004, the PRC foreign ministry suddenly announced that it would start opening its records to researchers. Tens of thousands of records have apparently been declassified for the period up to 1965. To be sure, the archival releases in Beijing remain tightly controlled—researchers are only allowed to look at documents in scanned form through a computer terminal. Only a much smaller fraction of the documents that have been declassified have thus far been made accessible in the archive’s reading room. Yet the profound impact of these new materials on the scholarly discussion is already visible, and they raise the prospect of the “bamboo curtain” being raised throughout archives in Asia.10 We can only hope that archives of non-communist, Southern states will undertake comparable projects. After all, the making of the Cold War was not limited to the “East” and the “West.” The “South” was an important actor throughout the Cold War. New works on the South using archives from the communist world countries and China have changed the contours of our understanding of the Cold War in Asia. The work of a remarkable group of Chinese (and Chinese-American) scholars leaves no doubt about this. More recently, Odd Arne Westad and Ilya Gaiduk, among others, have brought new light to Southern questions from the Soviet archives.11 While less archivally based work has been written on South–South ties and the emergence of non-alignment, Jamie Mackie has published a very useful short history of the Bandung conference of 1955 focusing on its importance in the history of international relations.12 Looking at perceptions between North and South, Matthew Jones has written an original essay on how the ideas of race colored American fears of Pan-Asianism at Bandung.13 We can only mention some of the most recent works on decolonization. Marc Frey, Ronald W. Pruessen, and Tan Tai Yong brought together some of the leading international scholars of decolonization in Southeast Asia to consider new perspectives, both empirical and theoretical, on how this process transformed Southeast Asia.14 Hans Antlov and Stein Tonnesson produced an important study on the interaction between imperial policy and Asian nationalism, which provides new theoretical and methodological approaches.15 Robert McMahon has blazed the trail in studying the role of American policy in decolonization in Indonesia, Vietnam, and more generally Southeast Asia.16

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Prasenjit Duara has probed the question more theoretically in Decolonization: Perspectives from Now and Then.17 Scholarship linking the Cold War and decolonization is also undergoing a theoretical and archival renewal. As thirty-year rules come into effect, historians have also benefited enormously from the opening of colonial archives in Western Europe. In the formerly colonized countries, fierce nationalist historiography is giving way to more critical approaches to the past. Archives there are beginning to open, albeit slowly, to local and outside scholars. For example, it is possible (though admittedly not easy) to work in national archives in Algeria and Vietnam.18 In both cases, we are finally getting enough distance from the events and enough access to archival materials to begin to think and work in more historical ways and in less politically volatile conditions. It is an exciting time. Take, for example, the path-breaking work on Algeria by Matthew Connelly, who shows how the “colonized,” in this case the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) leading the independence struggle, were able to play the international system against the “colonizer,” in this case the French. Connelly asks how “did Algerians relate their independence struggle to superpower rivalries, and how did the strategies they pursued influence international politics and contribute to their eventual victory?” The colonized were not just or solely victims, but actors in and shapers of the international system in the Cold War era. For Connelly, the FLN was revolutionary in its ability to win independence on the diplomatic front, not on the battlefield. It was, he argues, a “diplomatic revolution,” for the “precedents they set would show the way and smooth the path for other national liberation movements.19 Algeria, however, was not the first “diplomatic revolution” in the post-1945 decolonizing South. The essays in this volume show that the “diplomatic revolution” began in Southeast Asia, where decolonization and the Cold War first entered the South in full force. Indonesians, as noted above, were able to play the Cold War to their advantage on the diplomatic front (and not on the military one), succeeding in gaining American, United Nations, Asian (especially India and Burma), and Muslim support against the Dutch.20 Algeria, as is clear from documents we consulted in the national archives in Algiers in 2005, was seeking and learning from the experiences of the Chinese, Indonesians, Vietnamese, and others. Decolonization, like the international system itself, was internally connected across the South. It is no accident that the Algerian FLN was present in Bandung for the Afro-Asian conference in 1955, hosted by the Indonesians and Indians. All these Southern connections made perfect sense: The Algerian revolution was but one part of a wider revolutionary shift in the twentieth-century international system that started in Asia.21

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We suggest that such a geohistorical view stressing “connections” can cast new light on important questions in international history that are often lost in national and colonial histories or in approaches focused on the Cold War or decolonization alone. It is only by intersecting these distinct but overlapping trajectories that one can bring out the complexity of decolonization and the Cold War in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. The essays contained in this volume are, we hope, building blocks toward a new “interconnected” history. Notes 1. On the importance of connecting as opposed to privileging the “Western” or the “Asian” side at the expense of the other, see Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia,” Modern Asian Studies 31, no. 3 (1997), 735–62, and Deny Lombard, “Une autre ‘Méditerrannée’ dans le Sud-Est Asiatique,” Hérodote, no. 88 (1998), 184–93. 2. Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); Qiang Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950–1975 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); Yang Kuisong, Changes in Mao Zedong’s Attitude towards the Indochina War, 1949–1973, Cold War International History Project Working Paper 34 (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, February 2002). 3. A.J. Stockwell, “Southeast Asia in War and Peace: The End of European Colonial Empires,” in Nicholas Tarling, ed., Cambridge History of Southeast Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 346. 4. Pierre Daprini, “From Indochina to North Africa: French Discourses on Decolonisation,” in The Sphinx in the Tuileries and Other Essays in Modern French History, ed. Robert Aldrich and Martyn Lyons (Sydney: Department of Economic History, University of Sydney, 1999), 225, n. 9. 5. Into the 1950s, Indian leaders referred to themselves in “Southeast Asian” terms, a reflection, of course, of the novelty of the idea of “Southeast Asia” itself. 6. This is evident from recently declassified Chinese foreign ministry materials, published in Christian Ostermann, ed., “Inside China’s Cold War,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin (Fall 2007/Winter 2008). See also Pierre Queuille, Histoire de l’Afro-Asiatisme jusqu’à Bandoung: la naissance du Tiers-Monde (Paris: Payot, 1965); George McTurnan Kahin, The Asian-African Conference: Bandung, Indonesia, April 1955 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1956); and Jamie Mackie, Non-Alignment and Afro-Asian Solidarity (Singapore: Editions Didier Millet, 2005). Tito’s non-alignment was born out of a very different historical set of circumstances than Nehru and Sukarno’s neutralism. Tito may have broken with Stalin, but he was most certainly communist and believed in exporting revolution, at least in the wake of World War II in the Mediterranean. Georges-Henri Soutou makes this important point in La guerre de cinquante ans: les relations Est–Ouest, 1943–1990 (Paris: Fayard, 2001), 42–44, 213–17. Nehru may have been opposed to aligning with the big powers in the Cold War, but he never tried to export ideological revolution into Burma or Laos. Tito, at least in the wake of World War II, was not opposed to supporting communism outside Yugoslavia’s borders.

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7. John Lewis Gaddis, “On Starting All Over Again: A Naïve Approach to the Study of the Cold War,” in Reviewing the Cold War: Approaches, Interpretations, and Theory, ed. Odd Arne Westad (London and Portland, OR: F. Cass, 2000), 27–42; and Melvyn P. Leffler, “New Approaches, Old Interpretations, and Prospective Reconfigurations,” Diplomatic History 19, no. 2 (Spring 1995),172–97. 8. The most recent statement is John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New York: Penguin, 2005). A first synthesis was attempted in Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), in particular his final chapter. See also Melvyn P. Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union and the Cold War (N.Y.: Hill & Wang, 2007); “The Cold War: Inside Enemy Archives,” Foreign Affairs 75, no. 4 (July/August 1996), 120–35; “What Do ‘We Now Know’?” American Historical Review 104, no. 2 (April 1999), 501–25, and “Bringing It Together,” Reviewing the Cold War, 47–58. For a critical view, see Geir Lundestad, “How (Not) to Study the Origins for the Cold War,” in Reviewing the Cold War: Approaches, Interpretations, and Theory, ed. Odd Arne Westad (London and Portland, OR: F. Cass, 2000), 64–80. Among the most prominent publications are Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996); Hope M. Harrison, Driving the Soviets Up the Wall (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003). See also the work of Kathryn Weathersby on the Soviet role in the Korean War, “The Soviet Role in the Korean War: The State of Historical Knowledge,” in The Korean War in World History, ed. William Stueck (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2004), 61–92; Should We Fear This? Stalin and the Danger of War with America, Cold War International History Project Working Paper 39 (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, July 2002); “Stalin, Mao and the End of the Korean War,” in Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the Sino–Soviet Alliance, ed. Odd Arne Westad (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998); “To Attack or Not to Attack? Stalin, Kim Il Sung and the Prelude to War,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin no. 5 (1995), 1–9. See also other publications by the Cold War International History Project, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. 9. See Christian Ostermann, “Archival Thaw in China,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin no. 16 (Fall 2007/Spring 2008); Michael H. Hunt and Odd Arne Westad, “The Chinese Communist Party and International Affairs: A Field Report of the New Historical Sources and Old Research Problems,” China Quarterly no. 122 (Summer 1990), 258–72; Michael Hunt, “CCP Foreign Relations: A Guide to the Literature,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin nos. 6–7 (Winter 1995/ 96), 129, 136–43; Steven M. Goldstein and He Di, “New Chinese Sources on the History of the Cold War,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 1 (Spring 1992), 4–6; Chen Jian, “Not Yet a Revolution: Reviewing China’s “New Cold War Documentation,” Conference on the Power of Free Inquiry and Cold War International History, College Park, MD, 1998, http://www.archives.gov/research/cold-war/ conference/chen-jian.html; Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), Introduction; Chen Jian, “Questions Concerning China and the International Cold War,” Journal of East China Normal University, December 2001; Shen Zhihua, “To Further Promote the Opening and Publication of China’s Historical Archives—Remarks on Reading of ‘Liu Shaoqi’s Manu-

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scripts since the Founding of the PRC,’” www.shenzhihua.net/wszt/000165.htm. For an excellent recent review of Chinese Cold War scholarship, see Yafeng Xia, “The Study of Cold War International History in China: A Review of the Last Twenty Years,” Journal of Cold War Studies, no. 10:1 (Winter 2008), 81–115. 10. See also Sulin Zhang, “The Declassification of Chinese Foreign Ministry Archival Documents: A Brief Survey,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 16 (Fall 2007/Spring 2008), 10–11. 11. Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Ilya Gaiduk, Confronting Vietnam: Soviet Policy towards the Indochina Conflict, 1954–1963 (Stanford, CA: Woodrow Wilson Center Press/Stanford University Press, 2003). 12. Jamie Mackie, Bandung 1955: Non-Alignment and Afro-Asian Solidarity (Singapore: Editions Didier Millet, 2005). 13. Matthew Jones, “A ‘Segregated’ Asia? Race, the Bandung Conference, and PanAsianist Fears in American Thought and Policy, 1954–1955,” Diplomatic History, 29, no. 5 (November 2005), 841–68. 14. Marc Frey, Ronald W. Pruessen, and Tan Tai Yong, eds., The Transformation of Southeast Asia: International Perspectives on Decolonization (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2003). 15. Hans Antlov and Stein Tonnesson, eds., Imperial Policy and South East Asian Nationalism (Surrey, UK: Curzon Press, 1995). 16. Robert J. McMahon, The Limits of Empire: The United States and Southeast Asia since World War II (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999); Robert McMahon, Colonialism and Cold War: The United States and the Struggle for Indonesian Independence, 1945–49 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981). 17. Prasenjit Duara, ed., Decolonization: Perspectives from Now and Then (London: Routledge, 2004). 18. Together with Martin Thomas (Exeter), the coeditors were able to consult the archives of the Algerian nationalist movement (the Front de Libération Nationale) and the provisional government of the Algerian republic during a trip to Algiers in April 2005. Pierre Asselin has done extensive work on international affairs in the Vietnamese archives in Hanoi. 19. Matthew Connelly, “Rethinking the Cold War and Decolonization: The Grand Strategy of the Algerian War for Independence,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 33 (2001), 222. 20. Similarly, if the Indonesian and Algerian nationalists were able to use the Cold War to their advantage on the diplomatic front, it is worth noting that for Vietnamese communists the Cold War undermined their ability to secure diplomatic victory in 1954, despite their resounding military victory at Dien Bien Phu. Vietnamese communist nationalists only obtained half of the Vietnam that Ho Chi Minh had declared independent on September 2, 1945. 21. Arguably this started well before 1945 in Europe and elsewhere, but that is another story.

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1. Recasting Vietnam: The Bao Dai Solution and the Outbreak of the Cold War in Southeast Asia Mark Atwood Lawrence

On March 12, 1947, President Harry S. Truman proclaimed the existence of a bipolar world. “At the present moment in world history,” he declared in a speech before the U.S. Congress, “nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life.” One way, the president insisted, was characterized by democratic institutions, individual liberties, and freedom from political oppression. The other way was defined by “the will of the minority forcibly imposed upon the majority” and relied on “terror” and the “suppression of personal freedoms.” Henceforth, Truman stated, “it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures” and “to assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.”1 Truman’s rhetoric seemed to encompass the entire globe and to describe a process of bifurcation that varied little from place to place. In practice, of course, the world was more complicated. Southeast Asia presented perhaps the most obvious challenge to the polarized worldview that underlay the Truman Doctrine. In that part of the world, it seemed to be America’s ostensibly democratic partners—the European colonial powers—that played the role of “armed minorities” depriving others of their “personal freedoms” and preventing them from working out their “destinies” as they saw fit. Certainly that seemed to be the case in Vietnam, where the French army was waging war against revolutionary nationalists determined to overthrow French colonialism and establish a Vietnamese nation-state. U.S. leaders had little doubt that Ho Chi Minh and other leaders of the Democratic Republic of Viet-

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nam were linked to international communism. But neither did they doubt that the French, by insisting on the restoration of colonial domination following World War II, bore responsibility for creating conditions that made radical solutions appealing to ordinary Vietnamese. Under these circumstances, it was difficult—much more so than Truman’s breezy generalizations suggested—to know how to advance America’s Cold War interests. Backing the French would bolster a key ally in opposing Soviet expansionism in Europe and possibly bring short-term stability to Southeast Asia, but it also threatened to fuel the anticolonial grievances that had generated unrest in the first place. Failure to back France would likely facilitate the establishment of a communist state in Vietnam. In a memo just five weeks before Truman’s speech, U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall threw up his hands in frustration. “Frankly,” he wrote, “we have no solution (to the) problem to suggest.”2 Within three years, however, Washington had overcome its indecision about Vietnam. In early May 1950, Marshall’s successor as secretary of state, Dean Acheson, announced U.S. plans to provide $15 million in military aid to support the French war effort in Indochina. American largesse reflected the relative ease with which U.S. officials could now slot Vietnam into the simple scheme outlined by Truman in 1947. “It is now clear that (Southeast Asia) as a region has become the target of a coordinated offensive plainly directed by the Kremlin,” the National Security Council had bluntly declared in July 1949.3 A few months later, the Council insisted in NSC-48/1 that the moment had come to provide “political, economic and military assistance and advice” to help those who were resisting communist aggression.4 On this logic, the United States made its first bold step into Southeast Asia, forming an economic and military partnership with France and Britain to block communist advances in the region. How did Americans overcome their doubts of 1947 and decide in 1950 to throw their support behind the French war effort? How, in other words, did Americans come to see the predicament in Vietnam in the same terms in which they viewed the European situation—as a Cold War conflict that required a concerted and forceful response from the United States? Part of the answer lies in the triumph of Mao Zedong’s Chinese communist forces in late 1949, a momentous event that brought communist rule to the doorstep of Southeast Asia and led U.S. officials, anxious about further communist expansion, to see political unrest there through red-tinted glasses. But another part of the answer lies in the successful effort undertaken jointly by the French, British, and U.S. governments between 1947 and 1950 to recast the political situation in Vietnam in a way that would mesh more neatly with the Manichean worldview taking shape in Washington and, to a degree, among all of the Western powers.

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More specifically, the three governments worked to establish a new Westernoriented regime in Vietnam to challenge Ho Chi Minh for the mantle of Vietnamese nationalism and the recognition of the international community. Success in these endeavors promised to eliminate nagging doubts about the justice of the French war effort and to clear the way for decisive action to defeat the Viet Minh once and for all. The effort to establish a non-communist government under former Vietnamese emperor Bao Dai—the “Bao Dai solution”—has often been written off as an abject failure.5 Indeed, in Bao Dai the French government selected a man poorly suited to the task of rallying his people against a bona fide nationalist such as Ho Chi Minh. Born in 1913, Bao Dai had become the thirteenth emperor of Vietnam’s Nguyen dynasty in 1926. He ruled in name only, however, at a time when French colonial administrators exercised tight control over his country. In fact, Bao Dai spent much of his youth developing the tastes for gambling, hunting, and other leisure pursuits that would earn him an unshakeable reputation for hedonism. During the tumultuous 1940s, Bao Dai showed few impressive leadership qualities as he transferred his loyalties first to Vichy France in 1940, then to Japan, and then to Ho Chi Minh’s Democratic Republic of Vietnam before bowing out of Vietnamese politics altogether and leaving the country in 1946.6 The following year, however, Bao Dai began a fresh collaboration, conceding to pressure from the new French republic to open talks on establishing a Vietnamese state under his leadership. The effort culminated in 1949 in the Elysée Accords that established Bao Dai’s “Etat du Viet Nam” as an “associated state” within the French Union. The U.S. and British governments, which had taken a keen interest in the experiment from its inception, backed the new regime and sought to build broad international support for it. As before, however, Bao Dai’s leadership had little staying power. Over the next few years, he failed to generate much support among his own people, and the entire arrangement came to a crashing end after the French military defeat in 1954. The following year South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem eased Bao Dai out of power in a referendum that established a republic. Bao Dai fled into exile in France, where he lived out the rest of his long life as a historical curiosity synonymous with France’s failure in Indochina. Yet in at least one critical respect, the Bao Dai solution deserves to be rated a success.7 The manufacturing of an alternative nationalism within Vietnam served as the catalyst for the creation of an international coalition behind French policy in Vietnam and, in turn, for the extension of anticommunist solidarity among the Western powers into Southeast Asia. The Bao Dai initiative helped redefine Ho Chi Minh as an uncomplicated communist and, more im-

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portant, enabled policymakers in the United States and Britain who favored backing the French war effort to rebut widespread criticism that in doing so they would be merely feeding the grievances that underpinned the insurgency. Now they could reasonably claim that Vietnam had at least the makings of a legitimate postcolonial government and therefore constituted a friendly Western-oriented regime under threat from communist subversion. Moreover, they could form a partnership to contain communism in Asia not just on a shared desperation to stop the advance of Chinese communism but also on a shared hope that they might be able to create a stable, Westward-looking Vietnamese state with genuine staying power. Whether they were correct in that judgment is, of course, a different matter entirely.

The Diplomatic Dimension of the Bao Dai Policy French policymakers initiated the Bao Dai solution as a way to solve at least three interlocking problems that they confronted in Vietnam in 1946 and 1947. Above all, officials first conceived of the new policy in mid-1946 as a way to counter the impressive appeal of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the nation-state proclaimed by Ho Chi Minh on September 2, 1945. By establishing an alternative pole of attraction for Vietnamese nationalists, French leaders hoped the Bao Dai regime might generate support among the Vietnamese for a political settlement that would preserve a significant degree of French control. Initially, French architects of the plan had some reason for optimism. By mid-1947, an array of anticommunist nationalists, including Ngo Dinh Diem and leaders of the once-powerful VNQDD party, were calling for establishment of a broad-based nationalist regime under Bao Dai to preside over a reunited Vietnam within the French Union. Impressed by the apparently broad appeal of this initiative, French officials, who had been flirting with a solution of this sort for at least a year, co-opted the effort. By late summer 1947, the Bao Dai solution had become the cornerstone of French policy in Vietnam.8 Around that time, the Bao Dai solution gained appeal within the French government for a second reason. The initiative promised to shore up political support within France for the war in Vietnam. Upon the outbreak of war at the end of 1946, French public opinion had rallied behind the French military effort. As the war dragged over the following few months, however, fracture lines had begun to show as French citizens realized the enormous human and material costs that might be necessary to defeat Ho Chi Minh. The center-right Mouvement Républicaine Populaire (MRP) and parts of the Socialist party continued to back the government’s politique de force. But many Socialists and the entire Communist party, which broke from the governing coalition in May, in-

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sisted on renewed negotiations with Ho Chi Minh’s government. Proponents of the war managed to hold sufficient support in the National Assembly to avert that course and, just as important, maintained their domination of the two bureaucracies most important to Indochina policy, the colonial and foreign ministries. Yet there remained a considerable danger that any military setback in Vietnam would tip the precarious balance in Paris. Public opinion polls gave the government good reason to worry. One survey conducted in May 1947 found that 65 percent of Socialist supporters backed a peaceful solution in Vietnam, as did an impressive 34 percent of those who backed the MRP.9 Finally, the Bao Dai solution gained appeal during 1947, especially within the French Foreign Ministry, as a way to weaken international hostility to the French war effort. Almost as soon as the fighting had broken out, national leaders in other Asian countries condemned France for naked colonial aggression. Indian and Burmese leaders, in the process of acquiring their independence from Britain, sharply limited the numbers of French ships and planes that could pass through their territories on the way to Indochina. Meanwhile, port workers throughout Southeast Asia refused to service French ships carrying troops and supplies. In some places, Asian nationalists even called for volunteer forces to go to Indochina to fight alongside the Viet Minh. Of all these developments, only the refusal to allow stopovers by French ships posed any immediate threat to the prosecution of the war, but the political implications of this avalanche of anti-French opinion were inescapable.10 Even more discouraging than this Asian hostility were the attitudes of the British and U.S. governments, the two nations upon which France depended most heavily for political, economic, and military cooperation in Asia and around the world. Western doubts about the war threatened not only to undercut the legitimacy of French policy but also—and more urgently—to keep France from obtaining badly needed military supplies. Indeed, as French equipment losses mounted in the first half of 1947, commanders insisted on the absolute necessity of tapping into British and above all U.S. resources. France, they understood, lacked the material strength to wage a protracted war in Southeast Asia by itself. To French relief, Britain showed some signs of cooperating. Following the outbreak of the Franco-Viet Minh war, the British government, eager to see the French restore stability in Indochina as quickly as possible, quietly expressed support for the war and sent limited military supplies. But London also made clear that it would not risk the censure of Asian nationalists by backing the French overtly or by sending large quantities of materiel. The U.S. reaction to the war was even more alarming for French leaders. Since the restoration of French sovereignty over Indochina after World War II,

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French officials had recognized that they would be able to restore administrative control and reestablish the Indochinese economy only with the cooperation of the United States, the sole nation with sufficient resources to offset France’s material weaknesses. During 1946, the Truman administration welcomed the negotiations between France and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) and relaxed some of the limits it had imposed at the end of the Pacific war on the transfer of military equipment to France for use in Indochina. After fighting erupted between the French military and the Viet Minh at the end of 1946, however, Washington distanced itself from French policy and imposed new restrictions on equipment transfers. To be sure, some U.S. officials believed that Washington should set aside its qualms about alienating Asian nationalists and recognize that the chief U.S. interest lay in assisting France, a critical ally, even if its policy in Asia left much to be desired. But a preponderance of opinion within the Truman administration insisted on avoiding association with the French military campaign. Wary of contributing to the further radicalization of Vietnamese nationalism, the United States sat on the sidelines.11 Facing strong resistance within Vietnam, widening political divisions within France, and deep skepticism around the world, officials within the French Colonial Ministry moved ahead with growing urgency during the second half of 1947 to implement the Bao Dai policy. First and foremost, the initiative was designed to draw support away from Ho Chi Minh and the DRV and to establish an alternative negotiating partner that would agree to keep Vietnam snugly within the French imperial fold. But the diplomatic dimension of the Bao Dai solution increasingly came to the fore as the war ground on and the necessity of changing international perceptions of French policy seemed to grow more urgent. A revealing memorandum by Jean Ramadier, a former colonial administrator in Indochina who enjoyed access to high-level policymaking, spelled out the logic in late 1947. “The attitude of Great Britain and the U.S.A. makes it inconceivable to follow a policy of reestablishing our sovereignty on the old terms,” wrote Ramadier, whose father Paul, the French premier, had sent him to Vietnam earlier in the year to appraise the situation. Of all the territories in Southeast Asia, Jean Ramadier suggested, only Indochina and, for the moment, Indonesia had not achieved concrete progress toward self-rule—a glaring discrepancy that cast French policy in an unflattering light internationally. He suggested that France had no choice but to follow suit by negotiating with local nationalists. But Ramadier expressed confidence that France could achieve all of its objectives by doing so with Bao Dai. The American experience in Japan, where U.S. officials had allowed the emperor to remain on his throne after

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World War II, seemed to suggest the possibility of working through traditional monarchs to preserve Western influence. At the same time, Ramadier expressed confidence that Bao Dai would “play the nationalist game” in Vietnam. Although Bao Dai recognized that he would likely depend on French political and military support, he was also convinced, according to Ramadier, that his country stood to gain more from France than from the two most likely alternatives to shape a new Vietnamese political order—the United States and the Soviet Union.12 Here, then, was the ideal solution. The Bao Dai initiative promised to ease foreign hostility to French policy while helping to ensure France’s grip over Indochina over the long term. Emile Bollaert, the French high commissioner in Indochina, formally unveiled the French government’s new approach on September 10 in a landmark speech at Ha Dong. Bollaert offered two concessions. First, he indicated that the French government was prepared to accept the unification of the three parts of Vietnam (Tonkin, Annam, and Cochinchina) within a single state. Second, he offered the new Vietnam “independence” within the French Union (using the Vietnamese word “doc lap” rather than the French “indépendance”). He went on, however, to make clear that Paris intended to retain a good deal of authority over Vietnamese affairs. Above all, Bollaert specified that membership in the French Union would bar Vietnam from having its own military or diplomatic policy, aspects of sovereignty obviously central to Viet Minh demands for many months. Bollaert also declared that his offer was non-negotiable, explaining that bargaining over such matters “would be in truth unworthy of such a noble cause.” He merely called on “all the political and cultural groups within Vietnam” to respond to his initiative by bringing forth a “qualified government” to lead the country into this promised place in the French Union.13 In an effort to preserve the fiction that the former emperor was the spontaneous choice of the Vietnamese themselves, Bollaert never mentioned Bao Dai by name. But there could be little doubt what French leaders had in mind.

A Troubled Beginning As many scholars have shown, the French government had its hands full in attempting to sell Bao Dai to the Vietnamese people.14 Enthusiasm for a noncommunist alternative to Ho Chi Minh dwindled in late 1947 at precisely the moment when the French government accelerated its effort to attract support for the new regime. The two trends were, of course, connected. As historian Neil L. Jamieson has pointed out, Bollaert’s speech came as a “bitter disappointment” to non-communist nationalists, “totally devoid” as it was “of any

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imaginative concepts or substantive proposals that might have provided a rallying point for the divided nationalist community and led to serious negotiations.”15 Little improved over the following months. Part of the problem was the sheer difficulty of persuading the former emperor to play the role scripted for him in Paris, even after he and the French government signed a statement of principles at Ha Long Bay on December 7, 1947. Sharply criticized by many of the non-communist nationalists whom he allegedly represented, Bao Dai fled to Europe to escape responsibility for agreements that stopped short of ensuring either independence or unity. Only after strenuous French efforts to keep the project alive did the situation grow momentarily more hopeful. On June 5, 1948, Bollaert and General Nguyen Van Xuan, head of a provisional government established with Bao Dai’s blessing, met on a French warship in Ha Long Bay to sign an accord “solemnly” recognizing the “unity and independence” of Vietnam within the French Union. Although these measures represented an advance over the previous agreement, the new deal still left open the question of how much control the new state would exercise over Vietnam’s economic and foreign policies, areas where the meaning of “independence” remained vague at best. Moreover, the French colonial minister seemed to renege on the deal before the ink was dry when he announced on June 8 that not even Vietnamese unity was ensured.16 The skepticism that greeted the Bao Dai solution within Vietnam was rivaled only by the doubt with which foreign governments regarded the new French policy. To be sure, the Bao Dai initiative did not provoke outright condemnation internationally. Even Indian leaders, who had sharply criticized France for provoking the war with the Viet Minh, held their tongues. Jawaharlal Nehru depended too heavily on European good will and feared communist expansion in Asia too strongly to risk asserting his hostility too publicly.17 U.S. and British officials were even less public with their criticism, but their confidential appraisals of French policy reverberated with skepticism that sometimes bordered on outright contempt. U.S. officials expressed doubts about the Bao Dai policy from the moment they first heard rumors of French flirtation with the ex-emperor in 1946. In the first half of 1947, Americans generally discounted the likelihood of such an endeavor because of the obvious difficulties of making it work. For example, the U.S. ambassador to Paris, Jefferson Caffery, noted problems with trying to rally support behind a leader tainted by the “antiquated” monarchical system from which he sprang.18 As the Bao Dai solution gathered momentum later in the year, U.S. appraisals became, if anything, even more pessimistic. The U.S. consul in Saigon, Charles S. Reed, ridiculed the French quest to “dig up” a vi-

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able alternative to Ho Chi Minh and to create the impression that the Vietnamese population was “pantingly awaiting the return of Bao Dai.”19 In fact, by the estimation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the reality was quite different. In its appraisal of the December 1947 agreement between Bao Dai and the French government, CIA analysts concluded that any regime under Bao Dai would be hopelessly tainted by association with France and could never hope to challenge the “fanatical loyalty” inspired by Ho Chi Minh. “The prestige and native support of such a government,” the report asserted, “will be vitiated by its collaboration with the French, by its inability to enforce its decrees except by French force, by determined reprisals against its leaders by agents of the Vietnam Republic, and by constant raids, sabotage and terrorism by guerrilla units within the area of its jurisdiction.”20 Following the June 5, 1948, Ha Long Bay Protocol, the new U.S. consul in Saigon, George M. Abbott, noted that the French had broached the subject of “independence” for the first time. But he concluded that any positive effect on opinion within Vietnam would “rapidly evaporate” unless Paris offered more concessions and cleared up remaining ambiguities.21 British doubts in the first months of the Bao Dai experiment were even more extreme. Above all, Bao Dai seemed to face an impossible task in drawing support away from Ho Chi Minh, a towering figure who had proved his nationalist credentials over a lifetime. Nguyen Van Xuan, head of the provisional government associated with Bao Dai, drew British ridicule in May 1948 when he publicly asserted that three-quarters of Ho’s supporters could be lured into supporting the new regime. In fact, asserted A.G. Trevor-Wilson, the British consul general in Hanoi, Viet Minh propaganda was probably closer to the mark in contending that Bao Dai could avoid assassination only if he remained “constantly in a French tank” while he was in Vietnam.22 While the Foreign Office was willing to concede in April 1948 that Bao Dai was “apparently not the playboy he is often painted,” British officials, like their American counterparts, saw little grounds for optimism following the June agreement.23 After watching a sparsely attended ceremony marking the formal establishment of the provisional government under Xuan, Trevor-Wilson reported a “general opinion” that Bao Dai had “committed political suicide” by associating himself with the entire endeavor. “One cannot see how such a Government can possibly bring about any change in the atmosphere, except to harden the hearts of the Viet Minh,” the consul wrote.24 French officials were keenly aware of such skepticism, and many privately shared it. Nevertheless, the French government pressed ahead with the Bao Dai solution and worked strenuously to encourage a more favorable international view of it. In fact, as French officials encountered difficulties in launching the

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new regime during 1948, they increasingly concluded that Western, especially U.S., support for the initiative might be a crucial ingredient for success. Unquestionably, French leaders had no more stomach than earlier for a significant American role within Indochina. But they increasingly believed that the appearance of U.S. backing for Bao Dai could help bolster the new regime’s standing among the Vietnamese and among Asian nationalists elsewhere—and thus could help to insulate Vietnam from outside influences over the long term. As one Foreign Ministry report phrased it, the Vietnamese had become fascinated with the American “way of life,” largely thanks to circulation of American media and films. “It seems that the population is more attracted by the American lifestyle than by communist organizations,” the report suggested. If the Vietnamese believed that the United States was on their side, it concluded, “[T]hey will be more disposed to reach an accommodation with France.”25 In retrospect, it is clear that the French government was pursuing a losing political and diplomatic strategy in Vietnam. In embarking on the Bao Dai solution, after all, the French government was, to a degree, accepting that the era of European colonialism was over and that it could no longer insulate its territory against powerful transnational political currents: the liberal internationalism advocated by the United States and international communism promoted by the Soviet Union. By 1954, the French government had fully recognized these realities. In 1947 and 1948, however, French officials hoped they could still have it both ways—that they could, in short, preserve the essence of French domination and while also shaping Vietnamese politics to mesh with international currents that they understood they could not exclude from Vietnam altogether. By playing their hand skillfully, in fact, French leaders hoped that realigning Vietnamese politics might be the key that they were seeking to maintain control over the longer term. To win U.S. and British support for the Bao Dai solution, French leaders believed that they needed to encourage a nuanced view in Washington and London. On the one hand, they needed to demonstrate that French policy meshed with U.S. and British expectations of gradual colonial devolution. Accordingly, French diplomats stressed repeatedly in conversations with Western counterparts that Paris was making steady progress toward implementing a genuinely liberal arrangement in Vietnam. To be sure, they readily confessed that the lack of a strong National Assembly majority on Indochina matters made it difficult to move ahead quickly with new concessions to Bao Dai or to open new negotiations aimed at transferring additional powers to the new state. Nevertheless, Léon Pignon, the newly appointed high commissioner for Indochina, assured U.S. Ambassador Caffery in fall 1948 that France was making “steady if not spectacular progress” in implementing the Bao Dai solution

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and winning Vietnamese support for it.26 A month later, Jacques Baeyens, head of the Foreign Ministry’s Asia desk, assured Caffery that an “early agreement” to accord more powers to the State of Vietnam was in the making.27 On the other hand, French diplomats sought to paint the Democratic Republic of Vietnam as the servant of international communism. From the end of World War II until 1948, French officials had emphasized the DRV’s communist tinge only occasionally in their attempts to generate sympathy among British and American colleagues—a pattern that reflected both the problem of establishing a direct link between the DRV and international communism and the difficulty of taking that approach while the French Communist Party (FCP) sat in the governing coalition in Paris. After the FCP broke with the cabinet in May 1947 and went into opposition, however, new possibilities opened up. In 1948, French diplomats began to mask persistent doubts about the role of communism within the DRV and to accentuate evidence of the Viet Minh’s communist dimension. In one characteristic encounter in October, for example, a Sûreté agent handed George M. Abbott, the U.S. consul in Saigon, “two large manila folders” containing captured Viet Minh documents purporting to demonstrate that DRV propaganda increasingly mimicked Moscow’s antiAmerican line. Under questioning by Abbott, the Sûreté agent acknowledged that there was “no concrete evidence that Ho was an outright communist” and that in fact he had strong credentials as a nationalist. But the agent insisted that it was “dangerous to give Ho a chance a chance to prove himself” one way or the other.28 The risks of being wrong, in other words, outweighed the benefits that might flow from waiting for more evidence to emerge.

Reassessing Bao Dai: Britain By the start of 1949, British officials were inclined to agree with not only this assessment but also its converse—that the potential benefits if the Bao Dai policy succeeded outweighed the lack of evidence that it had much of a chance of doing so. Both the hostility to Ho Chi Minh and this backhanded new acceptance of Bao Dai flowed from a crucial change in British perceptions of Southeast Asia that occurred over the second half of 1948. The shift began in the summer when a communist-led rebellion erupted in Malaya, a territory of vital importance to Britain’s struggling economy.29 Coming on top of dramatic gains by Mao Zedong’s communist armies in China, the Malayan crisis seemed to signal an intensifying crisis across the region. Malcolm MacDonald, the British commissioner general for the Far East, declared a state of emergency in Malaya as rebels began attacking the rubber plantations and tin mines that provided a significant portion of Britain’s hard currency earnings. London

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hurriedly dispatched military reinforcements to safeguard these assets and to suppress the rebellion. Meanwhile, policymakers reappraised Britain’s policy toward Indochina in light of these frightening new developments. Already disposed to view Southeast Asia as a politically and economically integrated unit, officials readily concluded that a satisfactory solution in Malaya depended partly on the restoration of a Western-oriented political order in Vietnam. British specialists believed that the fighting in Vietnam contributed powerfully to unrest across the region by disrupting the region’s recovery from the economic devastation caused by the war against Japan. Particularly alarming was the possibility that persistent shortages of Indochinese rice would exacerbate political instabilities across South and Southeast Asia.30 But London officials also worried that the Viet Minh might be serving as a dangerous source of inspiration for radical movements elsewhere in Southeast Asia and possibly even providing material and political assistance beyond the borders of Vietnam. Although analysts lacked specific evidence of Viet Minh encouragement for insurgencies elsewhere, they had little doubt that the Democratic Republic of Vietnam had ambitions in this regard, noting that by the end of 1948 the DRV had established a nascent diplomatic network with offices in Rangoon, Singapore, Bangkok, and Hong Kong.31 Newly convinced of Vietnam’s importance to the entire Southeast Asian peninsula, the British government grew markedly more willing in the second half of 1948 to assist the French military effort. The British Chiefs of Staff sought regional defense cooperation with their French counterparts, while British authorities in Singapore provided new types of military gear to support the French army. This new willingness to assist France did not mean, however, that old British anxieties about French policy—or about the risks of being closely associated with it—had evaporated. On the contrary, old doubts remained. British officials worried that they lacked the material wherewithal to provide what France would need in order to restore stability in Indochina. Even more, officials feared that mounting support for France would come at the expense of Britain’s relationship with India, which British policymakers regarded as crucial to the protection of their nation’s interests in Asia over the long term. Although Nehru’s anticommunism prevented him from offering direct support for the Viet Minh, he regarded the DRV as a legitimate expression of Vietnamese nationalism and quietly condemned France for attempting to install a puppet government as a disguise for colonial ambition. In late summer 1948, the Indian government indicated its position by raising new objections to the use of Indian airfields by French military aircraft.32 An acute dilemma thus confronted the British government by the start of 1949: How to bolster the French war effort—now seen as vital to British in-

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terests in the region—while also protecting Britain’s good name among Asian nationalists? Only one solution presented itself: Bao Dai. From a strictly military angle, there seemed to be no alternative. “A political agreement leading to the defection of Ho Chi Minh’s purely nationalist supporters is the only chance French troops have of even being able to get the upper hand and, incidentally, being in a position to prevent possible eventual Chinese communist infiltration into Tonkin,” the British military liaison officer in Saigon bluntly reported in December 1948.33 Other British officials saw longer-term political advantages in the Bao Dai policy. If it succeeded, they concluded, it might solve their problem by simultaneously preserving Western influence in Vietnam and recasting the Vietnamese relationship to the West as collaboration among likeminded states rather than colonial domination. In the best case, full implementation of the Bao Dai solution would ease American skepticism about French policy and encourage Washington to put its vast resources at the disposal of the French army. American support would, in turn, both bolster the French military’s chances and ease the burden on Britain to supply war materiel. Unquestionably, British officials remained skeptical of Bao Dai’s chances of establishing a viable state. “No one thinks he can succeed,” Frank Gibbs, the British consul in Saigon advised London in March 1949.34 A detailed Foreign Office study from the same time concluded that it was “doubtful” that Bao Dai had “sufficient powers of attraction” to lure anti-communist nationalists from the ranks of Ho Chi Minh’s supporters.35 Yet alongside such gloomy assessments emerged a second, more optimistic strand of thinking, cautiously at first but with more assurance as time passed. Sometimes both strands intermingled in the mind of a single individual. In November 1948, four months before the comment quoted above, Frank Gibbs asserted in a dispatch to the Foreign Office that Bao Dai stood a reasonable chance of attracting a following if he returned to Vietnam to lead a “representative Nationalist government to which a real measure of independence had been granted.” A “large majority” of Vietnamese “detest communism,” Gibbs wrote, and “if Bao Dai came back to lead a representative Nationalist government to which a real measure of independence had been granted, the communists might lose their grip.”36 Confidence mounted in early 1949, especially after the French government and Bao Dai appeared to take a long step toward more fully establishing the new Vietnamese state. On March 8, Bao Dai and French President Vincent Auriol met at the Elysée Palance and exchanged letters stating more precisely than ever before French commitments to the unity and independence of the State of Vietnam. In crucial ways, the agreements fell far short of a breakthrough. Not only did they require the approval of the French assembly, but they specified that France would retain control over the new state’s policy-

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making in several key areas. But British officials, lacking alternatives, were now in a mood to emphasize the positive. A few days after the Elysée agreements, for example, J.O. Ashley-Clarke, the second-ranking official at the British embassy in Paris, contended that there were now “modest grounds of hope” for Bao Dai. “The French have at long last not only chosen a figure round whom genuine Vietnamese nationalists can group themselves, but they have also conceded to him powers and a measure of prestige which should enable him to build up something substantial and coherent if he has the skill to do so.”37 By the end of the year, no less powerful a figure than Malcolm MacDonald, the British commissioner general in the Far East, had added his voice to the cautiously optimistic chorus. Bao Dai was hardly the “dull dog” he was commonly believed to be, MacDonald wrote. Rather, he was a “talkative, intelligent, and charming” man, full of “physical courage and patriotism.” If the French assembly endorsed the Elysée agreements by the end of the year, MacDonald insisted, “many genuine nationalists in Vietnam will be impressed and are likely in due course to transfer their allegiance to Bao Dai.” As a clincher, he added, “The Vietminh leaders admit this and fear it.”38 Now convinced that the Bao Dai solution was worth a shot, British officials ironically became the greatest champions of French policy. In part, they focused their efforts on persuading the French government to move ahead with ratification of the Elysée accords, a matter that remained in doubt all the way until the end of 1949. In a flurry of meetings with French counterparts in Paris, London, Saigon, and Singapore, British diplomats emphasized the necessity of quick action, a generous French interpretation of the agreements, and indications of French willingness to go still further to concede power to the Vietnamese. But British officials put at least as much energy into selling the Bao Dai solution internationally. In this way, they worked in parallel with French policymakers, who had been trying since 1947 to convince foreign governments to back the Bao Dai policy. British diplomats found little success in trying to sway Nehru, who publicly stated in November that he believed Bao Dai did not have “a ghost of a chance of succeeding.”39 But British leaders had little doubt that it was American endorsement, not Indian, that would do by far the most to bolster French policy. Accordingly, they pressed Washington with growing urgency through 1949 to take a more hopeful view of the Bao Dai policy.

Reassessing Bao Dai: The United States Over the course of that year, British officials would see reasons for optimism about the drift of American policymaking. As in Britain, the advance of communism in China and the emergence of new instabilities across Southeast Asia

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led Washington to reappraise its hands-off policy toward the war in Vietnam. The shift in American thinking was, it is important to observe, more complicated and controversial than in Britain—a reflection of the fact that Indochina had been a major point of contention for several years among policymakers who advocated close partnership with France and those who worried principally about alienating Asia by cooperating with the colonial powers. This tension did not disappear entirely even as officials who favored throwing American support behind French policy gradually got their way. But by the middle of 1949 there could be no question that U.S. policy was swinging behind Bao Dai. The shift began in June 1948 at an emergency meeting of U.S. diplomats and State Department personnel in Bangkok. The session, which occurred just after the outbreak of insurrection in Malaya, generated unprecedented assertions of anxiety about communist activism in Southeast Asia. Liberal policymakers, who had for years criticized French policy for encouraging antiWestern radicalism across the region, now registered little dissent against the view that menacing developments in China, Malaya, and Vietnam signaled a coordinated assault on Western interests in the region. Clearly, the Bangkok meeting agreed, the United States needed to take a more proactive stance throughout the region, above all in Vietnam. With little debate, American policymakers settled on Bao Dai as the only possibility to stabilize Vietnam and to prevent a communist triumph there. Liberals insisted nevertheless that the United States must be careful to embrace Bao Dai in a way calculated to maximize the chances of his success in establishing a viable Vietnamese state. Dramatic, unilateral moves to endorse Bao Dai and to build the new Vietnam into a Western-led anticommunist coalition would, liberals believed, only exacerbate the problems confronting Washington by encouraging the perception among Asians that the West was once again, if on a new pretext, seeking to control Asia’s destiny. It was therefore urgent to press France to go as far as possible toward conceding genuine independence and to arrange for Asian governments to take the lead in recognizing Bao Dai as leader of a legitimate state. Only if the new state could capture the mantle of Vietnamese nationalism, the liberals contended, did the West have a chance of defeating Ho Chi Minh.40 On this logic, a new consensus formed among U.S. policymakers centered on the need to implement the Bao Dai solution as fully as possible. Not even those American officials most eager to throw U.S. support behind the French war effort could, after all, object to this approach. Before the Elysée agreements and even afterward, the French government could obviously be criticized for dragging its feet on the whole initiative. Although French leaders had initiated the effort to recast Vietnamese politics, they were now being sur-

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passed by U.S. and British enthusiasts suddenly eager to take the approach much further than the original architects of the Bao Dai experiment had ever imagined. Even a strong Francophile such as Woodruff Wallner, the head of the State Department’s office for West European affairs, insisted that France must “at the very least” grant the State of Vietnam “real political and economic autonomy” and “an international status ultimately if not initially that of a dominion of the British Commonwealth.”41 Wallner’s counterpart in the State Department’s Far Eastern office, long a focal point of criticism about French behavior in Indochina, remained skeptical of that the Bao Dai solution could succeed. But under the circumstances, asserted Division Chief Walton Butterworth, “it should be given every chance to do so.”42 This new American attitude found full expression in a State Department paper on Indochina drafted at the end of September 1948, the first formal clarification of U.S. policy since the start of the Franco–Viet Minh war. Over the previous few years, the document asserted, the United States had been unable to choose between conflicting objectives in Indochina and had embraced a policy of “non-support” for either belligerent. Now, however, the growing communist threat made necessary a new American approach. “We are prepared,” the paper specified, “to support the French in every way possible in the establishment of a truly nationalist government in Indochina which, by giving satisfaction to the aspirations of the peoples of Indochina, will serve as a rallying point for the nationalists and will weaken the Communist elements.” The trick, the paper acknowledged, would be to find a formula that would preserve French influence while gratifying the obvious Vietnamese desire for self-rule. “Some solution must be found which will strike a balance between the aspirations of the peoples of Indochina and the interests of the French,” the paper asserted. The document made no specific mention of Bao Dai. Yet the paper left little doubt that he was the key figure in the quest for such a balance. To improve Bao Dai’s chances, the statement called for efforts to “press the French to accommodate the basic aspirations of the Vietnamese” by granting new concessions.43 Accordingly, U.S. diplomats in Paris stepped up their effort to urge the French government to implement the Bao Dai solution as quickly and fully as possible. Before long, however, U.S. officials ran up against an ambiguity at the heart to their new policy. How would they know when France had made enough concessions to Bao Dai to justify the extension of active American support—whether political, economic, or military—for the new state? The September 1948 paper had obliquely acknowledged this problem by pointing to limits on how far Washington could go in making demands of Paris. “We are naturally hesitant to press the French too strongly or to become deeply in-

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volved so long as we are not in a position to suggest a solution or until we are prepared to accept the onus of intervention,” declared the State Department. The paper also pointed out that Washington had no interest whatever in seeing the French withdraw from Indochina, a development that would inevitably lead to a takeover by “the militant Communist group.”44 Yet if Washington failed to press resolutely, officials believed, the French government would not go far enough toward conceding autonomy to Vietnam. This problem came to the fore in the first half of 1949, especially following the Elysée agreements in March and the French assembly’s vote three months later to approve the unification of Vietnam, a crucial step in the establishment of the new state. Were these developments sufficient for the United States to back the new state? For some American officials, the answer was clearly yes even though no Asian government seemed inclined to endorse Bao Dai. “The Bao Dai solution represents at this time the only apparent alternative to Communist domination in Indochina,” asserted one State Department paper in April 1949.45 In Paris, Ambassador Caffery took a similar view, urging Washington to consider taking a “calculated risk” by providing political and possibly economic support to help solidify the new state. “I appreciate of course,” Caffery acknowledged, “that if Bao Dai fails after receiving such support from (the United States) it will be interpreted as (a) further blow to our own position in Asia.” He concluded, however, by insisting that “in view of (the) fact that (the) only alternative to (the) Bao Dai solution would involve dealing with Ho Chi Minh(,) . . . I believe we should take this risk.”46 Caffery’s successor as ambassador to France, David Bruce, sought in late May to ease his colleagues’ anxiety about backing an arrangement that fell far short of full independence. Reflecting the skeptical view of the Vietnamese people that had colored American commentary for years, Bruce insisted that the agreements gave as much latitude for self-rule as the Vietnamese themselves “are now able to cope with.”47 Secretary of State Dean Acheson was less categorical in urging explicit U.S. support for the Bao Dai solution, but he nevertheless contributed to the drift of U.S. policy in this direction by insisting on the cataclysm that would result from any solution that involved the only alternative, Ho Chi Minh. To be sure, Acheson—much more than Caffery or other Francophiles within the State Department—remained openly frustrated with French foot-dragging on implementation of the Bao Dai policy. Irritated by nagging French pressure for American support of the Bao Dai policy, the secretary of state insisted that genuine nationalist appeal, not foreign help, was the key to success. “[The U.S.] experience in China,” he wrote,

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has shown [that] no [amount of] U.S. [military] and [economic] aid can save [a government], even if [it is] recognized by all other powers and possessed full opportunity [to] achieve [national] aims, unless it can rally support [of its] people against [the] Commies by affording representation [to] all important [national] groups, manifesting devotion to [national] as opposed [to] personal or party interests, and demonstrating real leadership. Yet Acheson also implicitly contrasted the possibility of Bao Dai’s ultimate success with the impossibility of dealing with Ho Chi Minh in any way despite his evident mass appeal. Ho’s nationalist popularity, insisted Acheson, was irrelevant since “all Stalinists in colonial areas are nationalists.” There could be no question, he added, that Ho Chi Minh was an “outright Commie” who wished to achieve Vietnamese independence only in order to subordinate it to “Commie purposes,” including the “ruthless extermination” of all dissenting political groups.48 French leaders sensed the favorable drift of American thinking in spring 1949 and worked strenuously to encourage it. They sometimes took a confrontational tack, as when Jean Daridan, counselor at the French embassy in Washington, warned the State Department that France might withdraw entirely from Indochina if the United States attempted to block shipments of U.S.-manufactured war materiel from Europe to Vietnam.49 More characteristically, however, French officials used friendlier methods calculated to demonstrate French determination to implement the Bao Dai solution in a far-reaching way. While National Assembly members complained of the government’s sluggishness in providing details of the Elysée agreements, diplomats assured Caffery that they stood ready to provide any information of interest to Washington.50 Meanwhile, French diplomats emphasized that the agreements offered significant concessions to Bao Dai; now it was up to the United States and Britain to help ensure his success. Henri Bonnet, the French ambassador in Washington, told senior State Department officials in May, for example, that the United States and France “had the same interest in seeing that Indochina was not taken over by the communists” and that Bao Dai was “the only noncommunist solution in sight.” Once the National Assembly had ratified the accords, Bonnet added, the French government hoped Washington would be able to “do something showing approval.”51 With French and British officials urging them on, U.S. officials most eager to begin actively supporting French policy seized on Bao Dai’s formal installation as head of state in June as their chance to bring about a decisive turn. The U.S. consul in Saigon, George Abbott, warned against any “prolonged de-

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lay” in offering an endorsement of Bao Dai and the new State of Vietnam. To hold back in the interest of applying pressure on Paris for further concessions would, Abbott insisted, “be interpreted by many as (a) sign that (the United States) sees no hope (of) success for Bao Dai and is resigned to (the) future inclusion (of the) area in (the) Communist sphere.”52 From Paris, Ambassador Bruce was even more adamant that the United States should ease its pressure on Paris and accept implementation of the Elysée agreements as an adequate step to justify a bold U.S. endorsement of Bao Dai. Bruce lashed out angrily when the State Department office of Far Eastern affairs instructed him on June 6 to hand the French government a long memorandum that pressed Paris for more concessions to Bao Dai.53 To pass along the memo would be a “serious mistake” because it would discourage French officials who had already been “battered and bruised” in getting the Elysée agreements enacted, Bruce insisted in a cable to Washington. “Under the circumstances,” he added, “(the) effect produced on these officials would be (the) opposite of constructive at (a) time when their best efforts are required to help Bao Dai experiment succeed.”54 Bruce, Abbott, and other like-minded Americans prevailed on this matter, ensuring that implementation of the Elysée accords, rather than some more meaningful indication of Bao Dai’s political viability, any new concessions by the French government, or recognition by an Asian government, would suffice to produce a decisive shift in U.S. policy. After Bruce quashed the paper urging further French concessions, James Webb, the acting secretary of state during Dean Acheson’s absence from Washington, approved Abbott’s proposal that Washington issue a declaration of support for French policy.55 The statement, issued publicly on June 21, proclaimed the formation of the Bao Dai government and promises of a new Vietnamese constitution to be “welcome developments” that would allow the “reestablishment of peace” and “the attainment of Vietnam’s rightful place in the family of nations.” The statement hinted at the necessity for further progress toward true Vietnamese independence, urging that the Elysée accords “form the basis for the liberal realization of the legitimate aspirations of the Vietnamese people.” Yet it offered a clear endorsement of the process that the French government and Bao Dai had begun. The Truman administration expressed confidence that “continuing statesmanship such as that already displayed by both parties” would bring positive results. For the first time since Indochina had become a significant policy issue during World War II, Washington had weighed in publicly on the French side.56 U.S. officials who had demanded further French concessions quickly registered sharp disapproval. While the statement was still under consideration, the U.S. ambassador to Thailand, Edwin Stanton, insisted that it was “very

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strongly inadvisable” to give “such a fulsome endorsement” to Bao Dai before he had demonstrated any ability to attract popular support for his government. By issuing the statement, Stanton added, the United States would risk squandering its leverage over France and becoming saddled with a Vietnamese government that proved “merely (a) puppet government of (the) French.”57 After the declaration was released, Charlton Ogburn, a Southeast Asia expert in the State Department’s office for Far Eastern affairs, accused Webb, Bruce, and their allies of running roughshod over policymakers with more knowledge of sociopolitical currents in Southeast Asia. In the process, Ogburn warned, the Truman administration was junking the nuanced approach that it had embraced in 1948 when it first accepted the need to do everything possible to make Bao Dai successful. As a result, “nothing effective is being done to promote a nonCommunist solution in Indochina.” All in all, Ogburn concluded, “I think we are heading into a very bad mess in the policy we are now following toward Indochina.”58

Conclusion Such protests had no effect. Over the following year, the United States moved inexorably toward the economic and military aid that would begin to flow to the Bao Dai regime in mid-1950 and to the French military and administrative apparatus that sustained it. That year was filled with Franco–American tension over the timing and modalities of U.S. assistance. Washington, usually backed by London, repeatedly attempted to apply pressure on Paris to concede greater independence to the State of Vietnam, not least by permitting the new government to receive assistance directly from the United States without the involvement of French intermediaries. On this issue, as on many others, however, French officials successfully resisted pressure from their Western partners. U.S. policymakers discovered to their deep annoyance that, having made the commitment to Bao Dai, they had lost much of the leverage over France that they had previously possessed. They had, in fact, become “captives” of French policy, as historian Gary Hess has aptly written.59 Underlying American frustration was the fundamental problem that many U.S. and British policymakers had chosen to ignore or to bypass in 1948 and 1949. The French purpose in recasting Vietnam differed significantly from the Anglo–American objective. French policymakers conceived of the Bao Dai solution as a means for maintaining French control in Vietnam—essentially, that is, as a method for preserving a colonial state amid an internal and international environment that was increasingly hostile to that goal. When French diplomats sought to sell the Bao Dai solution internationally, they hoped to se-

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cure foreign backing for an endeavor that would serve narrowly French aims. U.S. and British policymakers understood that the French government wished to retain influence in Vietnam, but they nevertheless viewed the Bao Dai solution as a means for achieving a genuinely independent Vietnamese state. Such a state, they believed, stood a reasonable chance of attracting not only the support of its own people but also the backing of the international community, including other nation-states with strong nationalist credentials. In this way, the Bao Dai solution seemed to offer a starting point for establishing an anticommunist coalition that included not only the Western powers but also postcolonial Asian nation-states. In 1950, the French government achieved one of the key objectives that it sought through the reconfiguration of Vietnamese politics—a firm commitment from its Western allies to place their prestige and material power behind France in its struggle to defeat the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. By contrast, Washington and London failed to obtain the genuinely independent Vietnamese regime that they believed would serve their Cold War purposes. This discrepancy contributed powerfully to the tensions that festered between Washington and Paris throughout the final four years of the First Indochina War. It also contributed to the eagerness with which the Eisenhower administration would seek to push France out of Indochina altogether following the French military defeat and the division of Vietnam in 1954. Now Washington was free to take over as the key Western power in Vietnam—or, more accurately, South Vietnam—without the taint of French colonialism. The United States, still hopeful of finding a formula for drawing nationalists away from Ho Chi Minh and thereby making Vietnam conform neatly to the Manichean Cold War ideal, set out to recast Vietnam in a new way. The results were, however, the same: failure and war.

Notes 1. Truman Doctrine speech quoted in Jussi M. Hanhimäki and Odd Arne Westad, eds., The Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 117–18. 2. Marshall to Caffery, February 3, 1947, Pentagon Papers (hereafter PP), Department of Defense, vol. 8, 98–99. 3. NSC-51, “A Report to the National Security Council by the Secretary of State on U.S. Policy Toward Southeast Asia,” July 1, 1949, Record Group (hereafter RG) 273, NSC Papers, box 7, National Archives and Records Administration (hereafter NARA), College Park, MD. 4. NSC-48/1, “The Position of the United States with Respect to Asia,” December 30, 1949, PP, vol. 8, 265–72. 5. The British historian R.E.M. Irving argues, for example, that the Bao Dai policy

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was implemented in “such a dilatory, backhanded manner that the ‘solution’ was discredited before it was properly implemented.” Irving, The First Indochina War: French and American Policy (London: Croom Helm, 1975), 56. Meanwhile, Marilyn Young’s extraordinary survey of the U.S. experience in Vietnam writes off Bao Dai as “rather ephemeral” as a rival to Ho Chi Minh. Young, The Vietnam Wars, 1945–1990 (New York: Harper Perennial, 1991), 42. 6. There is no full-scale biography of Bao Dai. See his autobiography, Le dragon d’Annam (Paris: Plon, 1980), and the helpful biographical sketch in Philippe Devillers, Histoire du Viêt-Nam de 1940 à 1952 (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1952). 7. My argument here expands on my book, Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), especially chapters 4 and 5. 8. Neil L. Jamieson, Understanding Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 210–13, and Ellen J. Hammer, The Struggle for Indochina (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1954), 209–12. 9. Cited in Alain Ruscio, Les communistes français et la guerre d’Indochine (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1985), 165. 10. For elaboration, see Lawrence, Assuming the Burden, 162–79. 11. For U.S. calculations, see William J. Duiker, U.S. Containment Policy and the Conflict in Indochina (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994); Lloyd C. Gardner, Approaching Vietnam: From World War II to Dienbienphu (New York: Norton, 1988); and Lawrence, Assuming the Burden. 12. Memo by Jean Ramadier, “Note sur la solution par une entente avec Bao Dai du problème indochinois,” 7 December 1947, box 128, Bidault Papers, Archives Nationales, Paris. 13. “Discours prononcé par M. E. Bollaert,” September 11,September 1947, RG59, 851G.00/9-1147, NARA. 14. See Devillers, Histoire du Viêt-Nam, chapters 23 to 26. 15. Jamieson, Understanding Vietnam, 212–13. 16. Jacques Dalloz, The War in Indo-China, 1945–1954, trans. Josephine Bacon (Savage, MD: Barnes and Noble, 1990), 89–90; Arthur J. Dommen, The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans: Nationalism and Communism in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2001), 186–87; Irving, The First Indochina War, 56–58. 17. S.R. SarDesai, Indian Foreign Policy in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, 1947–1964 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 11–16. 18. Caffery to State Department, March 12, 1947, RG 59, Central Decimal File, 851G.00/3-1247, NARA. 19. Reed (Saigon) to State Department, July 19, 1947, RG 263, CIA/Murphy Papers, box 102, NARA; Reed to State Department, August 26, 1947, RG 59, Central Decimal File, 851G.91/8-2647, NARA. 20. CIA report, December 10, 1947, RG 59, Central Decimal File, 851G.00/121047, NARA. 21. Abbott to State Department, June 7, 1948, RG59, Central Decimal File, 851G .006-748, NARA. 22. Report by Trevor-Wilson, “Political and Military Intelligence, French Indochina,” April 10, 1948, FO 371/69654, Public Records Office (hereafter PRO), Great Britain.

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23. Foreign Office to British embassy in Washington, April 14, 1948, FO371/ 69654, PRO. 24. Trevor-Wilson to Gibbs (Saigon), June 7, 1948, FO959, vol. 19, PRO. 25. French Foreign Ministry report, “Les Etats-Unis et l’Indochine Française,” November 20, 1948, Asie/Indochine, file 255, Ministere des affaires etrangeres (hereafter MAE). 26. Caffery to Marshall, November 1, 1948, RG263, CIA/Murphy papers, box 102, NARA. 27. Caffery to State Department, December 8, 1948, RG263, Murphy papers, box 102, NARA. 28. Memorandum of conversation, Abbott with Frances, October 18, 1948, RG59, Lot 54D190, records of the Philippine and Southeast Asia Division, 1944–1952, reel 6, NARA. 29. For meticulous analysis of the importance of Malaya to the British economy, see Andrew J. Rotter, The Path to Vietnam: Origins of the American Commitment to Southeast Asia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), especially chapter 3. 30. For British anxiety on this matter, see, for example, “French Indo-China: Annual Review for 1948,” May 25, 1949, FO371/75958, PRO. See also Lawrence, Assuming the Burden, 109, 140, 202–3. 31. Hopson (Saigon) to Foreign Office, November 15, 1948, FO959, vol. 20, PRO. See also Christopher E. Goscha, Thailand and the Southeast Asian Networks of the Vietnamese Revolution, 1885–1954 (Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies and Curzon Press, 1999). 32. Lloyd to Commonwealth Relations Office, August 26, 1948, FO371, file 69657, PRO. 33. Report by British Military Liaison Officer in Saigon, December 18, 1948, FO371/69659, PRO. 34. Gibbs (Saigon) to Foreign Office, March 21, 1949, FO371/75961, PRO. 35. Foreign Office memo, “French Indo-China,” March 24, 1949, FO371/75961, PRO. 36. Gibbs to Foreign Office, November 6, 1948, FO959, vol. 23, PRO. 37. Ashley-Clarke to Attlee, March 28, 1949, FO959, file 28, PRO. 38. MacDonald (Singapore) to Foreign Office, November 28, 1949, FO371/75977, PRO. 39. Baudet (London) to Foreign Ministry, November 9, 1949, Etats-Associés, Indes et Indochine, 1951–55, box 295, MAE. 40. Summary of the Bangkok conference proceedings, “Regional Implications of the Emergence of Burma and Other Neighboring Countries as Independent States,” June 21–26, 1948, RG59, PSA, reel 3, NARA. 41. Memorandum by Abbott and Wallner for Bangkok conference, June 21–26, 1948, Melby Papers, Southeast Asia File, box 9, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, MO. 42. Butterworth to Hickerson, May 25, 1948, RG59, 759G.00/5-2548, NARA. 43. “Department of State Policy Statement on Indochina,” September 27, 1948, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1948 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974), 6: 43–49. 44. Ibid.

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45. State Department draft policy statement, “Indochina,” April 1949, RG59, PSA, reel 10, NARA. 46. Caffery (Paris) to State Department, March 16, 1949, RG59, Central Decimal File, 851G.01/3-1649, NARA. 47. Bruce to State Department, May 30, 1949, FRUS, 1949, 7: 34–35. For discussion of American attitudes toward the Vietnamese, and the connection between those attitudes and the Bao Dai solution, see Mark Philip Bradley, Imagining Vietnam and America: The Making of Postcolonial Vietnam, 1919–1950 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), especially 173–76. 48. Acheson to Hanoi, May 20, 1949, FRUS, 1949, 7: 29–30. 49. Memorandum of conversation, Lacy with Daridan, May 10, 1949, RG59, PSA, reel 6, NARA. 50. Caffery to State Department, March 18, 1949, FRUS, 1949, 7: 14–15. 51. Memorandum of conversation, May 24, 1949, RG59, SEA, reel 8, NARA. 52. Abbott to State Department, June 10, 1949, FRUS, 1949, 7: 45. 53. State Department memorandum for the French Foreign Ministry, June 6, 1949, FRUS, 1949, 7: 39–45. 54. Bruce (Paris) to State Department, June 13, 1949, FRUS, 1949, 7: 46. 55. Rotter, The Path to Vietnam, 97–99. 56. “U.S. Backs Bao Dai’s Rule,” The New York Times, June 22, 1949. 57. Stanton (Bangkok) to State Department, June 17, 1949, FRUS, 1949, 7: 58–59. 58. Ogburn to Reed and O’Sullivan, June 28, 1949, RG59, PSA, reel 9, NARA. 59. Gary R. Hess, “The First American Commitment in Indochina: The Acceptance of the ‘Bao Dai Solution,’ 1950,” Diplomatic History 2 (1978): 331–50.

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2. Containment and the Challenge of Non-Alignment: The Cold War and U.S. Policy toward Indonesia, 1950–1952 Richard Mason

The Cold War initially focused on Europe but promptly spread to engulf the entire globe. Indeed, it was regions in the “Southern” half of the globe, areas generally referred to as the Third World, that the Cold War became heated and turned into hot wars. Southeast Asia was but one such area that was caught in the mire of the Cold War confrontation. Although these societies became keen objects of superpower attention, many of the newly independent nations in the region had, from the outset, preferred not to choose sides in the Soviet– American struggle, wishing only to win political independence from colonial rule and embark upon postwar economic rehabilitation and nation building. For many of these newly emerged states, neutralism in the Cold War was a domestic political imperative. At the same time, non-alignment allowed them to acquire assistance from both sides in the Cold War, a stance that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union appreciated. This paper discusses relations between the newly independent Republic of Indonesia and the United States during the Truman administration. The central theme is the interplay between the American policy of containment and the Indonesian policy of non-alignment in the Cold War.

Indonesia’s “Independent and Active” Foreign Policy Like India and Burma, the newly independent Indonesian republic preferred a foreign policy of neutralism and non-alignment in the Cold War.1 This stance had originated in the revolutionary period when Indonesia was fighting for in-

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dependence from the Dutch. It was first enunciated by Vice President Mohammad Hatta, who was then concurrently the prime minister, in a speech in early September 1948 before the Central Indonesian National Committee. The backdrop for the speech was the mounting demands by left-wing Indonesian political parties for the abrogation of the Renville Agreement, termination of negotiations with the Dutch, and an alignment with the Soviet Union to offset the seemingly pro-Dutch disposition of the United States in the Dutch– Indonesian conflict. Expounding his view on the appropriate course for Indonesian foreign policy, Hatta emphatically argued: Have the Indonesian people fighting for their freedom no other course of action open to them than to choose between being proRussian or pro-American? Is there no other position that can be taken in the pursuit of our national ideals? The government is of the opinion that the position to be taken is that Indonesia should not be a passive party in the arena of international politics but that it should be an active agent entitled to determine its own standpoint with the right to fight for its own goal.2 The Indonesian leadership generally distrusted both the Soviet Union and the United States. Despite their lack of direct evidence, Indonesian leaders suspected that the abortive communist revolt in Eastern Java during late 1948 was Soviet-directed. It was perhaps for this reason that Indonesia did not formalize mutual diplomatic recognition with the Soviet Union until late 1954. Distrust of the Soviet Union did not, however, lead the Indonesians to side unequivocally with the United States. While grateful to the United States for its support in their struggle for independence, the Indonesians remained suspicious of the Americans. Throughout their struggle against the Dutch, the United States had consistently supported the Dutch; not until it became clear that Dutch intransigence was threatening America’s own interests both in Indonesia and in Europe did the United States finally throw its weight on the side of Indonesia. Even then, during the negotiations at the Round Table Conference in late 1949, it seemed to the Indonesians that the United States had taken the side of the Dutch on the matter of debts to be assumed by the republic and, more importantly, on the issue of Irian Jaya, which remained under Dutch control.3 As the Cold War in Asia deepened during the postrevolutionary period, Indonesian leaders believed that a policy of “neutralism” would safeguard Indonesia from being used aggressively by one bloc against the other. As Hatta explained it, “Indonesia plays no favourites between the opposed blocs and follow its own path through the various international problems.” Since Indonesia did not share a common boundary with any of the Cold War belligerents,

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there was no pressing need to choose between the two blocs. “Her independent policy keeps her from enmity with either party, preserves her from the damage to her own interests that would follow from taking sides, and permits her to be friends with all nations on the basis of mutual respect.” Indonesia was prepared to receive intellectual, material and moral assistance from any other country, “provided there is no lessening of, or threat to, her independence and sovereignty.” A non-aligned foreign policy would also cater to domestic requirements: “Internal consolidation is the primary task. The government must show evidence of economic and social betterment if it is to offset the influence and agitation by radical circles. A foreign policy that aligned the country with either of the Great Powers would render this internal task infinitely more difficult.”4 Despite this profession of neutralism, however, the international orientation of Indonesia during the first half of the 1950s was in fact considerably closer to the Western bloc than to the Sino–Soviet bloc. Shared belief in democratic institutions presumably played some part in this disposition. Like India and Burma, Indonesia regarded its ability to operate according to Western democratic standards as a mark of achievement and modernity. More important, Indonesian leaders recognized that Indonesia was geographically situated within the Anglo–American economic and military orbit.5 Until the second half of the 1950s, Indonesia’s trade and commerce were almost exclusively with the Western bloc countries. The Indonesians looked to Europe and the United States as their most significant sources of imports, their most important markets, and their primary sources of technical, economic, and military assistance. Indonesian leaders were keenly aware that only the West, especially the United States, was in any position to offer economic and military assistance at that time. In addition, the Indonesians believed that the outcome of their claim to Irian Jaya depended on the attitude of the United States. Indonesian leaders were well aware how dependent Holland was on the United States, and they were convinced that just a word from Washington would force the Dutch to relinquish control over Irian. Thus, although Indonesia professed to pursue a neutral and independent policy in the Cold War, it leaned discernibly toward the United States. Tellingly, immediately after the transfer of sovereignty, the Hatta government proceeded to establish an embassy in Washington. By contrast, diplomatic relation with the Soviet Union was not formalized by an exchange of diplomatic representatives until September 1954. Similarly, although Indonesia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) had mutually recognized each other in March 1950, Indonesia set up only a consulate in Beijing while the PRC established a full embassy in Jakarta. Quite apart from the expectation of

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American support for Indonesia’s economic and territorial ambitions, these discrepancies also reflected the Indonesians’ distrust of the communist powers in consequence of the Madiun affair, sustained during the immediate postrevolutionary years by open Chinese communist support for revolutionary communist tactics in Indonesia. When diplomatic relations with the Sino– Soviet bloc were stepped up during the mid-1950s, it was the result of a convergence of certain developments, both domestic and external, affecting Indonesia and the Communist powers. Following the death of Stalin in 1953, the Sino–Soviet bloc shifted strategy toward an accommodation with non-aligned countries, a strategy to which Indonesia responded to counterbalance the influence of the United States.

The Regional Context of U.S. Policy toward Indonesia The central theme in American policy toward Indonesia, as toward the broader Southeast Asia region, was the Cold War and the concomitant containment of communism. By early 1949, American officials were already persuaded that Southeast Asia was the “target of a co-ordinated offensive directed by the Kremlin.” The establishment of a Soviet Embassy in Bangkok and especially the seemingly spontaneous “leftist” uprisings in Burma, Malaya, and the abortive communist revolt in Indonesia, which followed shortly after the Southeast Asia Youth Conference at Calcutta in February 1948, were taken as evidence of the Kremlin’s “more direct” interest in Southeast Asia than had existed before. Washington believed that the Kremlin was seeking “ultimate control over SEA [Southeast Asia] as a pawn in the struggle between the Soviet World and the Free World.” The region was important to the Free World as a source of raw materials, including rubber, tin and petroleum and as a crossroads in east–west and north–south global communications. The National Security Council estimated that in seeking to gain control of Southeast Asia, the Kremlin was “motivated in part by a desire to acquire SEA’s resources and communication lines but its immediate and perhaps even greater desire [(was)] to deny them to us.”6 American strategists regarded Southeast Asia as vital to the security of the United States and its potential loss as damaging to the American position in the Far East. “The extension of Communist authority in China represents a grievous political defeat for us; if SEA is also swept by Communism we shall have suffered a major political rout the repercussions of which will be felt throughout the rest of the world, especially in the Middle East and in a then critically exposed Australia.” With China being overwhelmed by communism, Southeast Asia represented “a vital segment on the line of containment,” which

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stretched from Japan southward around to the Indian Peninsula. The security of Japan, India, and Australia, three major non-communist bases in the Far East, depended in large measure on the denial of Southeast Asia to the Kremlin. “If SEA, particularly the Philippines and Indonesia, is lost, these three base areas will tend to be isolated from one another. If SEA is held, the links will exist for the development of an interdependent and integrated counterforce to Stalinism in this quarter of the world.”7 A series of American diplomatic, economic, and military survey missions sent to Southeast Asia between late 1949 and mid1950 all emphasized the importance of Southeast Asia and argued for greater American commitment to check the spread of communism to the region. The Truman administration’s policy toward Indonesia was part and parcel the containment strategy in Southeast Asia. While Indonesia was considered important to overall American geopolitical interests, it was not the primary focus of U.S. policy in the region. Rather, the focus of U.S. attention was Indochina, especially Vietnam, which by early 1950 had become an urgent military problem and considered the key to the defense of the region. Chinese and Soviet recognition of the Viet Minh in late January 1950 was seen as a “significant and ominous” portent of Stalin’s intention to “accelerate the revolutionary process” in Southeast Asia.8 Viet Minh guerrillas had already scored major gains against the French. With the prospect of increased Chinese and Soviet support, it might be able to force the French out of Indochina, thus removing the last military bulwark between China and the rest of Southeast Asia.9 On February 3, the United States recognized the Bao Dai regime that the French had set up, and undertook to furnish military and economic assistance to the French in Vietnam. State Department officials were certain that if Indochina fell, the rest of Southeast Asia would be imperiled.10 The prospect for Indonesia, in contrast, appeared much brighter. The Melby– Erskine military survey mission, which toured Southeast Asia immediately after the outbreak of the Korean War, ranked Indonesia only fourth, behind Indochina, Thailand, and the Philippines, in terms of priority.11 The government of the Indonesian republic was in the hands of “moderate” nationalists, who had demonstrated their anticommunism by quashing the communist revolt in Eastern Java in late 1948. Moreover, separated from the Asiatic mainland by water, the Indonesian archipelago was insulated from the domino effect. The immediate communist threat to the archipelago was seen to be “internal in character.” Although the Indonesian Republic had successfully liquidated “a full-scale Kremlin-directed Communist revolt” in late 1948, large numbers of “Communist operatives” imprisoned by the Indonesian authorities regained their freedom during the disorder which followed the Dutch military action in December 1948. State Department officials assumed that these elements were

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preparing to resume their activities in the near future: The “[p]resent Indonesian Nationalist leadership, having taken a strong anti-Communist line, is regarded as a dangerous enemy by world Communism which will spare no effort to destroy the present Indonesian nationalist leadership and to replace it by leadership which will respond to Communist direction.”12 The political, strategic, and economic importance of Indonesia to the United States was explained in a memorandum of October 12, 1949 from Walton Butterworth, assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs, to Secretary of State Dean Acheson: This vast archipelago, supporting a population of 75 million people, lies athwart the principal lines of communication between the Pacific and Indian Oceans. It produces commodities necessary to American industry, some of which are requisite to the U.S. strategic stock-pile program. Because of the dynamic character of its Nationalist movement, because of its great wealth and because it is the second largest Moslem country in the world, its political orientation has profound effect upon the political orientation of the rest of Asia. . . . The loss of Indonesia to the Communists would deprive the United States of an area of the highest political, economic and strategic importance and would doubtless result in economic difficulties in the Netherlands which would be unable to retain its beneficial interests in Indonesia on the basis of the Hague agreements. . . . This development would have a serious effect upon Benelux and consequently upon our North Atlantic arrangements.13 Militarily, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff considered Indonesia important especially in regard to supplies of petroleum in the event of war. Except for the Middle East, Indonesia supplied the only important available production outside of the Western Hemisphere. In addition, should Indonesia be hostile in the event of a war between the Soviet Union and the United States, the security of the lines of communication in the South Pacific-Indian Ocean area would become exceedingly tenuous. Antisubmarine problems in the area would also increase because of the availability to the enemy of safe anchorages and refueling and resupply points throughout an extremely large area.14 The U.S. policy toward postrevolutionary Indonesia was of course much more dynamic than merely denying the archipelago to the communists. Rather, the principal objective of U.S. policy was to bring Indonesia into a full alignment with the Western powers in the deepening Cold War. As Butterworth put it to Secretary Acheson, “As Communist gains on the Asiatic mainland increase, the importance of keeping Indonesia in the anti-Communist camp is of

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greater and greater importance. It is indeed the hope of the [(State)] Department that should the mainland be lost through Communism, Indonesia might provide a base of operations from which anti-Communist forces in Asia could begin recovery of the mainland.” Butterworth also believed that “a continuation in power of the present anti-Communist leadership in Indonesia will have a most profound effect upon leadership elsewhere in Asia.”15 NSC 48, a State Department position paper on Southeast Asia, which was approved by the president in December 1949, stated U.S. objectives in Indonesia In Indonesia, the United States should seek to strengthen the nonCommunist political orientation of the government, promote the economic development of Indonesia and influence Indonesia toward greater participation in measures which support the security of the area and Indonesia solidarity with the free world.16

Co-opting Indonesia Washington’s relations with the newly independent Indonesian republic opened on an amicable and promising note. Largely due to the ultimate American support in the Indonesians’ struggle for independence and also expectation of American economic aid, American prestige ran high among the Indonesians. The Irian Jaya issue did not loom large until the mid-1950s, and the United States had carefully avoided being drawn into the controversy by pursuing “hands-off” neutrality. The United States had wisely refrained from interfering in the Indonesians’ effort to dismantle the Dutch-sponsored federal system, which culminated in the proclamation of a unitary Republic of Indonesia in August 1950.17 The internal structure of Indonesia was probably far less important to the United States than its international orientation. In this connection, Washington’s major concern was to retain in power and to cultivate the pro-Western leadership of the Indonesian republic. Toward this end, the United States undertook to provide the new republic with desperately needed economic, technical, and military assistance. During the Round Table Conference at The Hague in November 1949, American officials had indicated to the Indonesians that the United States would be receptive to Indonesia’s request for technical and economic assistance; and immediately upon the conclusion of The Hague Agreement, the U.S. Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA) provided Indonesia with $40 million in grant aid, which was used primarily to purchase rice and textiles. On January 9, 1950, President Truman approved the provision of $5 million in military assistance to the Indonesian constabulary to maintain internal security “against Communist en-

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croachment.”18 The following month, the Export-Import Bank agreed to lend Indonesia $100 million to help finance the purchase of capital goods in the United States to reconstruct the Indonesian economy. Ambassador Merle Cochran and Ambassador-at-Large Phillip Jessup, who visited Indonesia in early February, both strongly supported the Indonesian application for the loan. Jessup cabled the State Department that while Indonesian economic prospects seemed good in the long term, “financial aid now should be viewed as political problem rather than purely banking investment” and impressed upon the State Department the need to press to eliminate all possible technicalities in processing the loan. Dean Rusk, then deputy undersecretary of state for Far Eastern affairs, was receptive and advised the Export-Import Bank accordingly.19 In April the State Department economic survey mission headed by Allen Griffin arrived in Indonesia to ascertain the republic’s needs for technical assistance under the Point IV program. It recommended immediate dispatch of $14.5 million in emergency aid covering several economic sectors as well as health and education. The mission pointed out that for the new government to establish itself and win the confidence of the Indonesian people in its ability to govern, it must make real progress toward the solution of short-term problems and also a visible start on long-range development projects giving hope for future amelioration of living conditions. “[D]isinterested aid” by the West would make a “favourable political impression on government and people still suspicious [of] Western motives and will increase popular support [to the] government friendly [to the] US.” Indonesia was a “promising example” of an effort to introduce Western-style democracy. “Failure here would spread confusion and defeatism elsewhere. Successful leadership [of] Indonesia would favorably affect Western orientation [of] other SEA governments.”20 In its final report submitted to the secretary of state, the Griffin mission emphasized that the rehabilitation of the Indonesian economy and the resumption of exports of Indonesian raw materials would contribute significantly to the “reestablishment of triangular world trade and hence to the success of ERP [European Recovery Program]” and that “to have Indonesia as a full political and economic partner in a free world would be of prime importance to the United States and to other likeminded nations.”21 While appreciative of such American assistance, Indonesian leaders were particularly wary of any strings that might be attached to it and feared that the United States would “administer” the aid. In a conversation with Ambassadors Jessup and Cochran in Jakarta in early February, President Sukarno very frankly told his American callers that although U.S. aid would be gratefully received he “felt that it must be tendered without strings” and that the United

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States must not “over-administer” the aid. When Jessup explained the “administration” of ECA aid to Europe and that the U.S. Congress required accounting, Sukarno countered that the situation in Asia was not comparable to that in Europe; in Asia, the United States was dealing with sensitive “new” countries who resented any implication that the United States was directing or supervising the use of aid that the United States might furnish. Sukarno “referred to America as the mother and the new Asiatic countries as grown sons who looked to their mother with affection and understanding but who did not wish her to interfere with the running of their own lives.” Sukarno repeated this point several times during the course of the conversation and emphasized “the absolute necessity of our understanding the psychological nature of this problem in the new countries of Asia.”22 He reiterated this point in a later conversation with Cochran in late March.23 Sukarno was understandably wary that the United States might attempt to draw Indonesia onto its side in the Cold War. Given the tense international situation of the early 1950s, Indonesian leaders were anxious to avoid being dragged into a possible war between the United States and the communist bloc. Moreover, taking sides in the Cold War was a strongly divisive issue among Indonesian political parties. After he returned from a trip to India in early 1950, Sukarno was determined to emulate India in maintaining a position of neutralism and non-alignment vis-à-vis the United States and the Soviet Union. If Indonesia was determined to hold aloof from the Soviet–American antagonism, the United States was equally bent upon co-opting Indonesia to its side in the Cold War. American officials held that a policy of neutralism and non-alignment was naive, self-deceptive, and even dangerous; and as the Cold War in Asia deepened, they were convinced that Indonesia necessarily had to take the U.S. side. That Indonesian neutralism was in fact pro-Western was apparently not good enough, for the Cold War was an uncompromisable situation. Thus, largely as a result of U.S. efforts to draw Indonesia into full alignment with the Western bloc, American–Indonesian relations, despite their amicable beginning, soon became strained.

Vietnam, China, and Korea The first acute foreign policy difference between the United States and Indonesia arose over the Indochinese issue, which came to a head in mid-1950. By and large, the Indonesian political leadership generally felt strong sympathy toward the Viet Minh regime under Ho Chi Minh. They believed that the Viet Minh enjoyed the support of the great majority of the Vietnamese and thought its struggle against the French akin to their own revolution against the Dutch.

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Conversely, they regarded the French-supported emperor Bao Dai to be a puppet, devoid of popular support and a mere French ploy to perpetuate colonialism in Indochina, reminiscent of the Dutch-sponsored federal states. The United States, however, after having itself recognized the Bao Dai regime, pressed Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries to follow suit, which the Hatta cabinet declined to do. To coerce Indonesia into compliance, or so it seemed to the Indonesians, the State Department delayed approving the recently promised $100-million Export-Import Bank loan. Indonesian resentment against the United States was widespread.24 On April 3, Njoto dan Sakirman, parliamentary leader of the communistline Partai Sosialis Indonesia, submitted a motion urging the government to “enter into diplomatic relations with the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.” The motion picked up considerable support among both communist and noncommunist groups and might have carried in parliament had it not been for the skill of Mohammad Natsir, leader of the Masjumi party. On June 2, as voting was about to take place on the Sakirman motion, Natsir submitted a countermotion, urging investigation of the situation in Vietnam prior to recognizing it, in order to determine what the government could do in concrete ways to advance the achievement of the national aspirations of the people of Vietnam. The Natsir countermotion was carried in parliament by a vote of 49 to 38, with a majority of parliamentarians abstaining. After the vote, Hatta made clear to the parliament that the government did not yet intend to recognize either Ho Chi Minh or Bao Dai, intending thereby to stay clear of the Cold War vis-à-vis Vietnam.25 Ambassador Cochran was much relieved by the outcome of the vote. He cabled the State Department to speed up processing the promised $100-million Export-Import Bank loan, expressing his anxiety that the United States might lose the friendship of Indonesia “if after having made financial commitments we falter to such an extent that moderate government which we have considered [to be the] hope of new nation is embarrassed and perhaps defeated by our default.”26 The State Department replied that it was “satisfied with manner in which [the Indonesian Government] has so far handled [the] question [of the] recognition [of] Ho Chi Minh” and believed that “present Gov’t will not take further step looking toward recognition [of] Ho regime for [the] foreseeable future.” The State Department drew the conclusion that while Indonesians, “at present, do not wish become involved in cold war on our side they are far more unwilling to become involved on other side which would, of course, be result of their recognition of Ho.”27 In addition to Vietnam, Indonesia and the United States also differed greatly in their respective attitudes toward the PRC. The American position on the

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China issue was made plain by Cochran in his response to a question from Sukarno as to why the United States refused to recognize the PRC: “We felt [(that the)] communization of China came as directly from Moscow as if tremendous army of Muscovites had marched into China to install their institutions at [(the)] point of (a) sword. . . . We did not feel Communism had been voluntarily adopted by the country and we doubted China would become irretrievably Communist. We did not risk believing, however, that Communism as it now exists in China is different from Communism as found in Moscow.” In addition, the Beijing regime had “not conducted itself as a government of sovereign state duly cognizant of rights of other sovereign states and following accepted methods and standards in international intercourse.”28 Most of the Indonesian leaders were convinced that Mao Zedong’s government enjoyed the support of the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people, that the cause of Jiang Jieshi’s nationalist regime on the mainland was lost, and that the communists were there to stay. Thus, although it was in no a hurry to open diplomatic relations with Beijing, the Hatta government nonetheless promptly reciprocated when Beijing recognized Indonesia. In August 1950, the PRC dispatched an ambassador to Indonesia but it was not until early 1951 that the Indonesian government set up a consulate in Beijing. Following its admission to the United Nations, the Indonesian government, in close conformity with other neutralist Asian governments such as India and Burma, made clear its belief that the representative of the Beijing government should replace those of the Chinese nationalist government in the United Nations.29 Ambassador Cochran was very disappointed when Indonesia decided to open diplomatic relation with the PRC. Shortly after the arrival of the Chinese ambassador in Jakarta, Cochran warned Sukarno against being complacent toward the communists and of the dangers inherent in the Indonesian move in recognizing the PRC. I told Sukarno he and his people were inclined to become too selfsatisfied and complacent over their newly-acquired sovereignty. . . . I said they might lose everything in brief period unless they were keenly alive to dangers of Communist infiltration in their schools, labor organizations, army, etc. I told him to be sure not to under-rate recently arrived Chinese Communist Ambassador who now has large staff already here. . . . His government would have to be most vigilant in watching Chinese activities which can be covered up so easily in a colony of two million Chinese in this archipelago.30 Washington and Jakarta also had differing reactions to the Korean War, which became sharper after the PRC entered the fray. Immediately after the war be-

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gan, the Indonesian government issued a categorical statement that the hostilities in Korea comprised yet another Cold War issue between the United States and Russia in which Indonesia wished to have no part. “North Korea is under Russian protection and the South Korean Republic is sponsored by the United States. Thus, the so-called civil war in Korea is first and foremost [(a)] matter concerning the two big powers in the ‘Cold War,’ namely the Russians on one side and America on the other.”31 It banned all foreign warships taking part in UN operations in Korea from refueling, loading, or being repaired in Indonesian ports. In a statement on July 27, the Indonesian Minister of Information indicated that since Indonesia was not then a member of the United Nations it had no obligation to follow the Security Council order on aid to Korea, and any vessel intending to call at Indonesian ports should submit a request to the Indonesian government, which would base its reply on the comity of nations.32 The State Department was piqued, characterizing the Indonesian action as “indefensible wrong-headedness.” Cochran was instructed to represent to the Indonesian authorities that while the United States fully understood the necessity for a “new uncertain Indo Govt maintaining neutrality within limits for reasonable length of time,” the Indonesian Government should understand “at this moment that in [(the)] struggle between USSR and [(the)] free world, Indonesian choice is not only unavoidable but has been made.” Particularly at a time when the United States and the free world were straining to support the UN on the battlefield, Indonesian refusal to allow UN ships port privileges in Indonesia would “be taken at worst as defection from UN and at best as aberration.” Cochran was to make clear to the Indonesian government that any continuation of these tendencies would “create situations in Congress and with U.S. public opinion which will force [the] U.S. govt to reconsider it assistance programs.”33 The Hatta government, however, stuck firmly to its neutralist stance. Raising the matter with Sukarno a few weeks later, Cochran expressed his disappointment that Indonesia, which owed its birth largely to the UN and was now awaiting admission to that body, had not come out publicly in support of the UN cause. The war in Korea, the ambassador argued, stemmed from communist North Korean aggression, with important support from the Russians. In fighting in Korea, the United States was merely upholding its pledge to the United Nations and would continue to fight on behalf of the UN-created South Korean state. Cochran further stated that in view of the American move in sending the Seventh Fleet to the Formosa Straits, it was not clear if the PRC would dare attack Formosa and risk a full war with the United States. But if this happened, Indonesians “surely ought to realize more fully than ever that there is a concerted move on the part of the Communists stemming from

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Moscow to take over all of Asia including islands to the south.” The Philippines and Indonesia would be extremely vulnerable “if [(the)] Chinese, with Moscow’s support, took Formosa, moved en masse over Indochina and Thailand and then threatened the two island republics, still weak from their birth struggles and from Communist internal machinations.” Indonesians should realize that only “U.S. force alone that can save Indonesia from Communism and that [Sukarno] should keep that in mind in his international relations.” There was no place for a neutralist third path in the Cold War struggle. “I said I realized Indonesian leaders had some conceptions of a ‘third force’ comparable to those advanced in India. I thought time would prove, however, that one must take side one feels is right one in such division as that which now faces the world.”34 Sukarno was presumably unimpressed by Cochran’s presentation.

Military Aid: Indonesia’s Achilles’ Heel While the Indonesian government was able to ward off American advances regarding recognition of the Bao Dai regime and a tacit alliance with the United States in the Korean War, it was susceptible to American pressure over military aid. Indonesia desperately needed military equipment with which to maintain internal security, and only the United States at this time was in any position to offer Indonesia such aid. Pursuant to the provision of the $5 million in military assistance to the Indonesian police, which President Truman approved on January 9, the State Department instructed Ambassador Cochran to negotiate a bilateral agreement with the Indonesian government, requiring a secret undertaking by Indonesia to observe an embargo on export of “war-potential materials” to any enemies of the United States. Hatta objected to a formal agreement, which would have to be ratified by the Indonesian Parliament, or a secret written exchange, but was agreeable to an exchange of diplomatic notes. Hatta assured Cochran that Indonesia was “strongly sympathetic” to the American resolve to check “communist imperialism,” but explained that “any promise even to consult at this critical time on control of export of warpotential materials would be extremely dangerous to Indonesia.” He explained that purchasers of Indonesian war-potential products would be given quotations only for delivery in Indonesia and that buyers would have to take title and responsibility in Indonesia. Hatta told Cochran that he was convinced that in times of hostilities the United States would continue to dominate the seas and America’s enemies would therefore have no access to Indonesian markets. Hatta, nonetheless, offered a secret verbal agreement that the Indonesian government would not export potential war materials to intermediate countries for transmission to enemies of the United States.35

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The State Department would have much preferred a formal treaty covering the facilitation of transfer of such items but conceded, “under pressure of necessity,” to an exchange of notes.36 Cochran advised the State Department that Hatta had gone the possible limit in his undertaking with the United States, and that Hatta feared that any more formal and extensive undertaking would be used against himself and his cabinet. Cochran reported that Hatta repeatedly insisted that the United States “should know that Indonesian policy, while officially ‘neutral,’ is in reality a policy against Russia and its satellites,” and that Indonesia “did not intend to contribute resources to Russia which would increase the strength of that country and its satellites and produce force which might be used aggressively against Indonesia.” The Indonesian premier, however, emphasized that “Indonesia must be cautious vis-à-vis Communism until stronger internally.”37 The exchange of notes and Hatta’s secret verbal undertaking, which was solemnized on August 15, represented only a qualified success in the American effort to co-opt Indonesia to its side in the Cold War. Ambassador Cochran was discernibly disappointed that while Indonesia was willing to receive military and economic aid from the United States, it was avoiding any appearance of commitment to the anticommunist cause. In a conversation with President Sukarno in late August, Cochran complained that he “had come to feel rather badly the past few weeks since it had begun to appear [(that)] Indonesians did not desire [to] have [the] world think they were even friends of United States. I said I had been obliged to play down assistance US giving Indonesia in way of police equipment, economic support and assignment of medical, agricultural and other technical experts under STEM plan.” Sukarno assured Cochran that there was “no diminution in friendship” but that he sympathized with the position Hatta had taken, for fear that leftist political parties would use any possible evidence that the United States might be endeavoring to influence Indonesian policy and draw Indonesia into the Korean War. Sukarno assured Cochran that he appreciated the assistance that the United States had given and hoped that the United States would continue to aid his country, but pointed out that such help could be much more effective if extended quietly rather than with great publicity.38

The Natsir Cabinet With the establishment of the Republic of Indonesia in August 1950, Mohammad Natsir of the Masjumi party replaced Hatta as prime minister. Natsir and the new foreign minister, Mohammad Roem, were as sternly anticommunist as Hatta but they were also especially sensitive to any charge of veering from

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the “independent and active foreign policy.” Moreover, the Natsir coalition cabinet included parties strongly suspicious of the West. The new government had no problem in receiving economic aid from the United States and in fact concluded such an agreement with the United States in October 1950. Military aid, however, was an entirely different matter. The cabinet was especially anxious to avoid any suggestion of committing Indonesia to an allied relationship with the West. Shortly after assuming office, Roem informed Cochran that the government would receive the previously scheduled Melby–Erskine survey mission for “an informal visit” but ruled out a military assistance program; his government desired to receive arms and military equipment only on a commercial and not on grant basis. This, Roem explained, “would be consistent with Indonesian foreign policy and would avoid domestic political difficulties. His government desired to be both independent and strong and he thought his people should be schooled in paying for what they need and making their own way.”39 When the Melby mission arrived in Jakarta, Roem confirmed that the Indonesian government did not want to work through the Mutual Defense Military Program. He explained that “this meant no unfriendly attitude toward the United States,” but that to obtain arms from the United States under the terms such as Hatta had negotiated on the police equipment “would not be in harmony with [a] foreign policy of independence and freedom of action.” Indonesian acceptance of the Mutual Defense Agreement would be immediately interpreted as Indonesia having taken sides. Furthermore, it would seriously endanger the life of the government. Roem pointed out that the principal leaders in the Natsir government were men whom Cochran had known and worked with and that the ambassador should be convinced that they were not sympathetic to communism. Roem told Cochran to “let Indonesia develop its own national leadership and take responsibility to solve its problems, always with feeling they could turn to the [(United States)] as [a)] friend with common ideals.” Cochran averred that while he was convinced of “the safe political philosophy of moderate leaders in present government,” he was not sure they were “sufficiently sensitive to [(the)] growing danger of Communism” and feared that they might wait too long before taking action, by which time it might be too late.40 Reporting the failure of his mission in Indonesia, Melby wrote to the State Department as follows: It is apparent that our visit here was premature for a military arrangement such as we proposed and that anything further can be expected only when a more mature political basis and atmosphere have been developed. We did not find any evidence of a

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Communist predisposition though danger of its growth should not be overlooked.41 If the Indonesian rejection of the mutual defense arrangement underlined important differences between Washington and Jakarta in international affairs, these differences became more marked after the Chinese entered the Korean War in November 1950. Although Indonesian leaders were concerned about the expansion of the war in Korea, they tended to regard Chinese intervention as an understandable response to General Douglas MacArthur’s drive northward to the Yalu, ignoring Beijing’s repeated warnings. The United States was gratified that in the United Nations Indonesia had joined the Arab and Asian countries in petitioning the PRC to halt at the 38th Parallel, but took exception to Indonesia joining three other Asian countries in abstaining from voting on the motion to discuss a resolution on the withdrawal of PRC troops from Korea. Talking to Sukarno on December 8, Cochran stressed that “Indonesia should realize [that the] Chinese move into Korea [was] part of [an] overall Soviet plan to control Asia and that resolute defense on [the] continent of Asia [was] vital if Indonesia itself was to be spared. . . . Indonesia must be awake to and admit [the] danger of Communist movement southward and formulate its policies accordingly.” Referring to Indonesia’s request to purchase arms from the United States and pointing to the pressure for U.S. equipment from American allies participating in the Korean struggle and the consequent difficulty in making equipment available outside Mutual Defense Aid Program, Cochran expressed his hope that the Indonesian government would find acceptable some sort of arrangement only slightly modifying that which he had consummated with Hatta on civil police equipment.42 Sukarno was less than impressed with Cochran’s argument. He explained that the position Indonesia had taken in the United Nations was one that it conscientiously felt would best contribute to preventing a third world war.43 Anxious to avoid steps likely to freeze China into an uncompromising position, Indonesia and like-minded nation-states in the United Nations believed that the Korean problem might be easier to resolve in the context of a general Far Eastern settlement, one which also covered the status of Taiwan and Chinese representation in the United Nations. This group of nations also refused to accept the U.S.-sponsored thesis that China was the aggressor nation in Korea. In the UN vote on January 30, 1951, on the American resolution branding China as an aggressor, however, Indonesia abstained, thus breaking ranks with India and Burma, which voted against the resolution.44 Desirous of U.S. aid but opposed to the American position in the Korean War, Indonesia took the

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middle path of abstention and hoped thereby not to antagonize the United States unduly. Such was the Indonesian dilemma of dependence.45 U.S. officials were aghast over this apparent Indonesian indifference but more disappointments were ahead. Against the background of the deteriorating military situation in Korea, the State Department began to consider establishing a military pact in Asia. In early February, Cochran raised with Roem the possibility of a Pacific Pact, embracing Indonesia, the United States, Australia, and America’s other Pacific allies. Roem pointed out that such an arrangement would not be consistent with Indonesia’s foreign policy. In response to further questioning from Cochran, Roem indicated that Indonesia expected the United States to come to its defense in the event of communist attack on its territory whether or not a formal security arrangement existed between the United States and Indonesia.46 The ambassador was extremely peeved. In a cable of February 3, he advised the State Department as follows: Believe this [is] propitious time to bring Indonesians [to] face the realities of the world situation. U.S. aid should not be taken for granted no matter how close our friendship has been or may continue with Indonesia. Indonesia will not only itself become a problem but will contribute to the strengthening of the Asiatic–Arab bloc, thereby creating a much bigger problem, if we continue too gentle a policy with this country. Cochran held that the Indonesians were “more likely to appreciate the benefits of such a pact if we make them realize at once that any further favors from the U.S. must be requested and merited on its record of behavior as a sovereign nation sympathetic to the policies of the free world.”47 Cochran’s State Department colleagues were immediately sympathetic toward the ambassador’s suggestion of getting tough with the Indonesians. This line of thinking had in fact been gaining both momentum and adherents within the Department since the last quarter of 1950.48 Reviewing the record of Indonesian relations with the United States in the Cold War, William Lacy, director of the office of Philippine and Southeast Asian affairs, lamented that “many Indonesians appear to believe that Indonesia has less to fear from Communism than from American efforts to combat Communism.” Despite their pressing needs, the Indonesians had been extremely reluctant to accept U.S. technicians and economic aid. The Indonesian Parliament had finally approved the ExportImport Bank loan in early November by a vote of 90 to 17, with some 50 percent of the members abstaining, but thus far had failed to take any action on

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ratifying the U.S.–Indonesian economic bilateral agreement. Cognizant of the internal difficulties faced by the Indonesian government, the United States had pursued a policy of “patience and perseverance” but it was now “necessary (to) apply more pressure in order to make the Indonesian realize that friendship between nations must be a two-way relationship.”49 In late February, Assistant Secretary Dean Rusk informed Ali Sastroamijoyo, the Indonesian ambassador in Washington, that in view of increasing U.S. defense expenditures, Congress was expected to review ECA programs critically. Rusk told Ali, perhaps rather unconvincingly, that this “bears no relation, for instance, to Indonesia’s voting in [the] UN, although he might like to discuss this and other aspects [of] Indonesia’s broad foreign policy [on an]other occasion.” Ali replied that he understood how the impression might arise that the ECA program had not been warmly received, as his government was obligated to handle with delicacy difficulties with the Indonesian parliament and “disorderly elements” in Indonesia. He stressed that his government “strongly desire[d] continuance [of the] ECA program,” and despite the housing difficulties, it desired to receive American technicians—“provided they are tactful and understanding”—in limited numbers. Ambassador Ali left with a parting shot that he had heard a “rumor” recently that the U.S. government was considering cutting off all economic aid to Indonesia, that these rumors disturbed him, and that he had cabled his government accordingly but he would assume that this was not the case.50 The State Department’s move to curtail the assistance program to Indonesia was vigorously opposed by the ECA. Colonel Allen Griffin, then ECA director for the Far East, angrily charged during a luncheon with Lacy that Cochran was providing Senator McCarthy with “excellent ammunition” by wanting the United States to “pull out of Indonesia, thereby turning the place over to the Communists.” Cochran, Griffin continued, “had made an abysmal mess of American relations with Indonesia and now, by wanting to kick ECA out of the country and getting hard-boiled with the Indonesians in the matter of supporting the U.S. in Korea, joining the Pacific Pact, and related matters, was making bad matters impossible.” Griffin insisted that Ambassador Cochran had personal reasons for objecting to the ECA programs and that such a negative approach was not the most effective means of combating communism and bringing the Indonesians to the American side. The State Department defended Ambassador Cochran’s record in Indonesia and argued that the proposed curtailment of aid had nothing to do with the larger American strategy toward Indonesia. Rather, the Department’s position was based on the fact that Indonesia’s gold and dollar exchange position had improved so greatly during the past year that it no longer required grant aid to buy commodities or serv-

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ices from the United States.51 Eventually, the State Department and the ECA reached an agreement to continue the program at a reduced level of $9.95 million for 1951 and $10.4 million for 1952.

The Pro-American Sukiman Cabinet The Natsir government resigned in late March 1951 as a result of a parliamentary impasse over a domestic issue and was replaced by a Masjumi– Indonesian National Party (PNI) coalition cabinet under the premiership of Sukiman Wiryosanjoyo of the Masjumi. Cochran was glad to see the Natsir cabinet depart. He thought that although Natsir and Roem were “individually outstanding in ability and character,” they had provided the Indonesian government with “ineffectual leadership.” Moreover, “although they individually professed strong anti-Commie feelings, they never took advantage of [(the)] opportunity afforded them as leading party in [(the)] government to formulate forceful policy against Communism.” Roem was “still rather naive in some of his concepts of an independent policy” and of the possible accomplishments by the Arab–Asiatic group. Cochran surmised that although “some friends” would be excluded from the new cabinet, American relations with the Sukiman government could be as good and perhaps even better than with the Natsir cabinet. He anticipated that while some aspects of the new cabinet’s policies “may not be Western,” there was “no reason to expect [(an)] anti-Western attitude.”52 The Sukiman government indeed proved much more congenial to the United States and more malleable to American interests than had the preceding Hatta and Natsir cabinets. Much to the gratification of Ambassador Cochran and the State Department, the new government pursued repressive anticommunist measures domestically while adopting a foreign policy that closely identified with that of the United States. This identification appeared especially starkly when Indonesia’s professed [neutralist] position in the Cold War was compared with that of Burma and India, two other prominent Asian neutralist states. In fact, during the tenure of the Sukiman government, Indonesia essentially broke ranks with India and Burma on many important Cold War issues. The Sukiman government’s decision to accept U.S. military aid under the terms of the Mutual Security Act in early 1952, in effect consummating an alliance with the United States, belied its claims to neutrality in the Cold War. Significantly, it was the cabinet’s flagrantly pro-American foreign policies, particularly the decision to commit Indonesia to the Mutual Security Act aid, which led to its fall in February 1952. The Sukiman government’s initial response to the American request for a UN embargo on the shipment of strategic war materials to China betrayed lit-

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tle of its later pro-American tendencies. Indonesia was then enjoying the “Korean boom” in rubber and tin and, naturally enough, there were serious misgivings over the wisdom of the embargo resolution. In addition, there was strong suspicion in Jakarta that the real American motive in introducing the embargo motion was to make the United States a single buyer vis-à-vis the producing countries, so that it could push down the price of these raw materials. The PRC, for its part, had not been slow in playing the rubber issue. Soon after the Sukiman cabinet assumed office, the Chinese embassy in Jakarta proposed a barter agreement whereby Indonesia would exchange rubber for rice. It was against this background that Foreign Minister Ahmad Subardjo, in reaction to critical questioning from the press, reportedly blurted on May 7 that Indonesia would “sell to the devil if it would serve the people’s interests.”53 This hasty statement was immediately revoked, however. The Indonesian embassy in Washington explained that Subardjo’s statement was made off-thecuff and was meant entirely for domestic consumption.54 The State Department was anxious that Indonesia observed the proposed UN embargo. Should Indonesia sell rubber to China, the effectiveness of the British embargo on selling rubber from its colonies to China would be destroyed. Moreover, historically, Indonesia had no trade with China; and for Indonesia to change the pattern of distribution of its product particularly when the United States was attempting to organize the free world against Chinese aggression in Korea would be most inopportune.55 In a conversation on May 11, Assistant Secretary Rusk told Ambassador Ali that should the attitude expressed by Subardjo became official policy, Indonesia could expect strong reactions from the United States.56 Equally forthright, Secretary Acheson told Ali that the State Department had been “seriously considering the economic aspects of Indonesian–U.S. relations” and that the United States considered, in this connection, the maintenance by Indonesia of its historic pattern of trade a “matter of highest importance.” The American public would certainly regard any departure from Indonesia’s historic pattern of trade as evidence of a desire on its part to move in the direction of the USSR and its satellites, at the expense of its happy relations with the United States. Acheson remarked that the Soviet bloc would be unable to meet Indonesian requirements and that any assistance the Soviet bloc might extend would come with “strings” attached. American assistance, in contrast, had been extended on a friendly basis and without strings.57 Ali, of course, well knew that American aid had its strings but wisely refrained from commenting on Acheson’s remarks. Counting on continued American economic and technical aid and, perhaps more importantly, hopeful of procuring arms on a reimbursable basis from the United States,58 the Sukiman government succumbed to this American pres-

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sure. Whereas India and Burma voted against the UN resolution placing an embargo of supplies of strategic raw materials to China, Indonesia abstained. Following strong American demarches in Jakarta, Washington, and New York, it reluctantly complied with the UN embargo despite resentment over lost foreign exchange earnings due to the attendant fall in the price of rubber. But this Indonesian compliance, evidently, had a definite price tag. Pointing to the difficult internal political situation and strong objections by the press and parliamentarians to Indonesian subscription to the embargo, Subardjo sought to obtain an additional $50 million ECA loan to offset the estimated $150 million in losses that Indonesia would incur by complying with the embargo. Cochran, disgusted, bluntly told Subardjo that the Indonesian Foreign Ministry itself had been directly responsible for stirring up this opposition. He adamantly refused to recommend any additional loans, pointing out that Indonesia had yet to make full use of past loans.59 In mid-September, despite Cochran’s continued but somewhat weakened opposition, the ECA agreed to provide Indonesia the additional $50 million loan. Presumably, the State Department calculated that the loan was a small price to pay for Indonesian agreement to observe the embargo. By that time, moreover, much to the satisfaction of Ambassador Cochran and the State Department, the Sukiman government had taken several domestic anticommunist measures. In July it refused admission to sixteen Chinese diplomats although they all had been issued entry visas by the Indonesian consulate in Beijing. The Indonesian Foreign Ministry charged that this was the third time the Chinese had violated “diplomatic courtesy” by failing to give adequate “prior notification” of the arrival of new embassy personnel. The real reason behind this move was to restrict the activities and contain the influence of the Chinese embassy in the Indonesian Chinese community.60 Perhaps even more gratifying to U.S. officials were the anticommunist raids of August 1951. On the basis of an alleged communist plot to overthrow the government, the Sukiman government launched a series of mass arrests. Some fifteen thousand persons were arrested, predominantly Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and “leftist” leaders, several hundred resident Chinese, and a number of the cabinet’s other political enemies. In the end, however, the government was unable to convince the parliament that any real threat to the state existed and, eventually, it was forced to release the detainees.61 On September 8, Indonesia signed the Japanese Peace Treaty, again breaking ranks with India and Burma, both of whom had boycotted the San Francisco Conference because the treaty was engineered by the United States and was intended as the cornerstone of American Cold War policy in Asia. Explaining its decision to sign the treaty, the Sukiman government stated that if

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Indonesia were to emulate India in concluding a separate bilateral peace treaty with Japan, “the atmosphere of good will would certainly be absent and Indonesia would certainly not be able to count on any support from the United States.”62 In reality, the Sukiman cabinet was trimming its sails to catch American dollars. After Indonesia endorsed the Japanese Treaty, the State Department agreed to provide the $50 million loan that Subardjo requested. The Indonesian press was especially critical of such “prostitution,” and due to strong domestic dissent the Japanese treaty was not submitted to parliament for ratification until 1958.63

The Secret Cochran-Subardjo Agreement The Sukiman government’s active anticommunism and pro-American leanings heartened Ambassador Cochran to attempt to get Indonesia to abandon its policy of non-alignment and enter into an alliance with the United States. In January 1952, he succeeded in inducing Subardjo to sign the Mutual Security Act Agreement on terms that clearly implied Indonesian military commitment to the United States. Under the Mutual Security Act of October 1951, a state receiving military aid on a grant basis was required to subscribe to Article 511(a), which committed it to contribute fully “to the defensive strength of the free world.” A state receiving reimbursable military aid or only economic and technical aid needed merely to pledge, under Article 511(b), to “maintain . . . world peace and to take such actions as may be mutually agreed upon to eliminate causes of international tension.” Since the unexpended balance for the Indonesian constabulary, totaling about $3 million, had been consolidated with the funds authorized by the Act, Indonesia was required to make the pledge under Article 511(a) tif it elected to continue with the program on a grant basis. On the other hand, if Indonesia was prepared to place the constabulary program on a reimbursable basis, assurance based on 511(b) would suffice.64 The State Department expressively instructed Cochran to urge the Indonesian government to accept 511(b) assurances if he was satisfied that 511(a) was unacceptable, but Cochran advised the State Department that he would endeavor to persuade Indonesia to accept the more binding pledge under 511(a) rather that 511(b). He argued that a “particularly bad impression would be created” if Indonesia was now obliged to commence paying for the balance of the long-promised constabulary equipment.65 His real motive was to break Indonesia’s policy of non-alignment and bring Indonesia squarely into the American camp. Cochran thought the time right for such a move since a rightist cabinet was then in power. Moreover, Indonesia desperately needed and wanted American military equipment. Cochran believed that the Indonesians, having

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been frustrated in their attempts to procure arms on a reimbursable basis from West European countries and the United States, were ready to accept the American terms. On January 5, 1952, Cochran and Subardjo signed the Mutual Security Assistance Treaty incorporating a somewhat watered-down version of 511(a) assurances. Subardjo, evidently, agreed to the provision because he was convinced that only through such an agreement could Indonesia procure desperately needed military equipment.66 In concluding the agreement, however, Subardjo did not consult his cabinet colleagues. Prime Minister Sukiman was informed of the negotiations but neither the minister of defense nor any member of the armed forces high command was consulted.67 Evidently, when Subardjo informed the prime minister of the terms, Sukiman recognized that the expression “free world” would cause serious problem with the press and parliament. He asked that this be changed to “peace-loving world,” but Cochran refused to alter the language of the agreement. Cochran later explained to the State Department that although he recognized the risk being taken in the inclusion of the phrase “free world,” he thought it worthwhile to make this attempt to draw Indonesia one step closer to the free world and prevent back-sliding to the level of Burma.68 Despite some reservations, Subardjo signed the agreement. The State Department was jubilant and Cochran was highly commended for managing to persuade the Indonesian government “to take [an] additional step toward alignment with the West.”69 But this sense of diplomatic victory was short-lived. One month after the agreement was signed, the secret became public. The Indonesian minister of defense was apparently shocked when, on February 4, American military personals from the embassy in Jakarta approached him on putting the agreement into effect. The next day the secret Cochran– Subardjo agreement was publicized in the Jakarta press, and over the next three weeks a flood of criticism descended upon the cabinet. Subardjo was attacked both for conducting secret diplomacy and on the content of the agreement. The Indonesian press became even more indignant when it learned that Burma and India had also secured American economic aid under the MSA without having to subscribe to Article 511(a). Vilification of the United States, and particularly of Cochran’s persistent attempts to coerce Indonesia to its side in the Cold War, was widespread. American prestige was at very low ebb. The Indonesian cabinet met to discuss the matter on February 8. It particularly objected to the implication of Indonesia’s military commitment to the United States. Subardjo was instructed to make every effort to persuade Cochran to accept an ex post facto change from 511(a) assurances to 511(b), but Cochran was adamantly opposed to “retracting from an agreement honorably entered.” Instead, he advised the State Department that if Indonesia re-

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pudiated Subardjo’s undertaking, the United States should immediately cease all forms of aid to Indonesia. The policy interests of the United States, he argued, would best be served by impressing upon the Indonesians that “we are not engaged in [a] world-wide giveaway program, but on [the] contrary, we are endeavoring first and most urgently to help those countries which are allied with us against mutually recognized common danger and, secondly to aid those under-developed countries which, because of unfavorable balance of payment(s), can not pay for needed capital equipment or technical assistance.” Indonesia fell into neither category and was unwilling to assume the responsibility, which, by act of Congress, the United States was required to place upon it in order to receive the type of MSA aid Indonesia really needed.70 Cochran remained unmoved even when the Sukiman cabinet resigned in late February. Indeed, he was almost intransigent when the State Department instructed him to ensure that the Indonesian government understood that it could opt for 511(b) assurances in order to receive economic aid, protesting that he “could not believe” that the Department would “risk such humiliation,” and asked for a reconsideration of the instruction.71 The State Department initially yielded to Cochran, but eventually decided that the ambassador was misconstruing the antagonisms that had arisen between him and the Indonesian government as a basic antagonism between the Indonesian government and the U.S. government on the issue of the continuation of an economic assistance program.72 In July, the State Department sent Stanley Andrews, director of the newly established Technical Co-operation Agency, to Jakarta to explain to the Indonesian government the transfer of U.S. assistance for Asian countries from the Mutual Security Agency to the Technical Co-operation Agency.

Conclusion In the fall of 1952, John Allison, then assistant secretary for Far Eastern affairs, was sent on a goodwill visit of the capitals of Southeast Asian countries. According to Allison, President Truman gave him the authority to tell the governments and peoples of Indonesia and Burma that the United States “fully understood their desire to be neutral and to build up their own strength and settle their internal problems before getting involved in international problems. We did exactly the same thing when we were young.”73 This, presumably, was to be the public posture. Close examination of the record of the Truman administration’s policies toward Indonesia, however, did not quite corroborate such understanding or tolerance. Rather, the instructions from the State Department given to Ambassador Cochran revealed the Washington’s conviction that the Cold War was an uncompromisable situation in

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which there was no room for neutralism. Cochran repeatedly told Indonesian leaders that neutralism was naive, self-deceptive, and dangerous, and that Indonesia’s best interests lay in a full-fledged alliance with the Western bloc. That Indonesian non-alignment leaned toward the United States was apparently not good enough. The fear that somehow neutralism would work to the benefit of the communists seemed to have pervaded American policies. Military aid, which was then only available from the West, was apparently Indonesia’s Achilles heel, but when Cochran attempted to exploit it there were unfortunate consequences. In his devious attempt to induce Indonesia to abandon its policy of non-alignment, Cochran had actually done the anticommunist cause in Indonesia a great disservice. In 1950, when the Americandominated UN Good Office Committee succeeded in guiding the transfer of sovereignty over the Netherlands East Indies from the Netherlands to the Republic of the United States of Indonesia, American prestige in Indonesia was flying high. By early 1952, as a result of the MSA crisis, American prestige reached its lowest level. The MSA crisis, in fact, marked the passing from the scene of the last flagrantly pro-American government that Indonesia had until the overthrow of Sukarno in 1966. Perhaps the moral of the MSA episode and overall American efforts to woo and coerce Indonesia into the Western bloc, was tersely summarized by the British Ambassador in Jakarta on an earlier occasion: “[Y]ou can encourage and foster the latent Indonesian hostility toward Communism, but you cannot attempt to bounce them into Americanism without producing the very evil you most hoped to avoid.”74 Notes 1. Earlier drafts of this paper were written at the University of Hong Kong while I was on a visiting research fellowship at the Centre for American Studies, March– May 2004. I thank Priscilla Roberts and Christopher Goscha for their comments on the paper. For discussion on the neutralism and non-alignment, see among others, Laurence W. Martin, ed., Neutralism and Nonalignment: The New States in World Affairs (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1962); and Peter Lyon, Neutralism (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1963). For discussion of the Indonesian variety of non-alignment, see J.M. van der Kroef, “Indonesia: Independent in the Cold War,” International Affairs 1, no. 1 (Spring 1951), 283–92; Ide Anak Agung Gde Agung, Twenty Years of Indonesian Foreign Policy, 1945–1965 (The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1973), chapter 5; Franklin B. Weinstein, The Meaning of Nonalignment: Indonesia’s “Independent and Active” Foreign Policy, International Relations of East Asia Project (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1974). For a survey of Indonesian foreign policy to 1982, see Michael Leifer, Indonesia’s Foreign Policy (London: Allen and Unwin, 1983). 2. Mohammad Hatta, Mendanjung Antara Dua Karang (Manoeuvring Between Two Cliffs) (Jakarta: Department of Information, 1951).

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3. The most comprehensive study of U.S. involvement in the Dutch–Indonesian conflict is Robert J. McMahon, Colonialism and the Cold War: The United States and the Struggle for Indonesian Independence, 1945–1949 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981). Also see Richard Mason, “The United States, the Cold War and the Nationalist Revolution, 1945–1950,” Journal of Oriental Studies 30, nos. 1–2 (1992), special issue, The Cold War and Beyond in Asia, ed. Priscilla Roberts, 60–75. 4. Mohammad Hatta, “Indonesia’s Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs (April 1953). The citations are from the reprint in Mohammad Hatta, Portrait of a Patriot: Selected Writings of Mohammad Hatta (Singapore: Gunung Agung, 1981), 550–51, 555. 5. Sutan Sjahrir, Our Struggle (November 1945), trans. R.O.G. Anderson, Modern Indonesia Project (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1968), 24. Sjahrir was the first prime minister of the Republic of Indonesia. 6. NSC-51, “A Report to the National Security Council by the Secretary of State on U.S. Policy Toward Southeast Asia,” July 1, 1949, Record Group (RG) 273, NSC Papers, box 7, National Archives and Records Administration (NA), College Park, MD. 7. Ibid. 8. Department of State Bulletin, February 13, 1950, 244; Memorandum by Charles Yost, January 31, 1950, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950, vol. 6 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976), 710–11. 9. Department of State, “Indochina Problem Paper,” February 1, 1950, FRUS, 1950, 6: 711–15. 10. On the origins of the U.S. commitment to Southeast Asia, see Andrew J. Rotter, The Path to Vietnam: Origins of the American Commitment to Southeast Asia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), chapter 8. On the initial U.S. commitment to the French in Vietnam, see George C. Herring, “The Truman Administration and the Restoration of French Sovereignty in Indochina,” Diplomatic History 1 (Spring 1977), 97–117. For discussion of the American recognition of the Bao Dai regime, see Gary Hess, “The First American Commitment in Indochina: The Acceptance of the ‘Bao Dai Solution,’ 1950,” Diplomatic History 2 (Fall 1978), 331–50, and Mark Atwood Lawrence’s chapter in this volume, “Recasting Vietnam: The Bao Dai Solution and the Outbreak of the Cold War in Southeast Asia.” 11. “Area Report on Southeast Asia by the Military Group of the Joint State– Defense Survey Team to Southeast Asia,” December 6, 1950, FRUS, 1950, 6: 170. 12. Memorandum, Walton Butterworth to Secretary Acheson, October 21, 1949, Department of State Central File, 890.20/10-2449, Confidential U.S. Department of State Central Files, The Far East, 1945–1949 (University Publications of America, 1991), reel 11. 13. Ibid. See also the annex to the memorandum from Secretary Acheson to President Truman, January 9, 1950, FRUS, 1950, 6: 964–66. 14. Letter, Secretary of Defense to the Secretary of State, November 7, 1950, ibid., 1092–93. See also Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1992, “United States Military Position toward the Indonesian Island Chain,” May 7, 1952, Records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Pacific Theatre, Part II: 1946–1953 (University Publications of America, 1979), reel 2. 15. Memorandum, Butterworth to Secretary Acheson, October 21, 1950, Department of State Central Files, 890.20/10. 2449, The Far East, 1945–1949, reel 11. 16. NSC-48/1, “The Position of the United States with Respect to Asia,” December 23, 1949, U.S Congress, House, Committee on Armed Services, United States–

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Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense (Washington, DC, 1971), Book 8, 226–72. 17. On the unitary movement, see George Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1952), 446–69. 18. Memorandum, Secretary of State to President Truman, January 9, 1950, FRUS, 1950, 6: 964. 19. Telegram, Jessup to Deputy Under Secretary Rusk, February 3, 1950, ibid., 978, fn. 2; Telegram, Rusk to Jessup, February 7, 1950, ibid., 978; also see Telegram, Cochran to the Department of State, January 29, 1950, ibid., 973–75. 20. Telegram, Griffin to the Secretary of State, April 22, 1950, ibid., 1016. 21. Samuel P. Hayes, The Beginning of American Aid to Southeast Asia: The Griffin Mission of 1950 (Lexington, MA: Heath Lexington Books, 1975), 281–82. 22. Memorandum of Conversation, February 3, 1950, FRUS, 1950, 6: 975–78. Memoranda by Jessup of conversations with other Indonesian leaders and American officials in Jakarta are filed in Department of State Central Files, 790.00/1-2450, The Far East, 1950–1954, reel 2. 23. Telegram, Cochran to the Department of State, March 23, 1950, FRUS, 1950, 6: 990. 24. George McTurnan Kahin, “Indonesian Politics and Nationalism,” in William Holland, ed., Asian Nationalism and the West (New York: Macmillan Company, 1953), 174. 25. Ibid., 174–75; Information Office, Embassy of Indonesia, Washington, Report on Indonesia, vol. 1, no. 46 (June 16, 1950), 1. See also the essay by Christopher Goscha in this volume, “Choosing between the Two Vietnams: 1950 and Southeast Asian Shifts in the International System.” 26. Telegram, Cochran to the Department of State, June 7, 1950, FRUS, 1950, 6: 1029, fn. 1. 27. Telegram, Secretary Acheson to Cochran, June 16, 1950, ibid., 1029–30. 28. Telegram, Cochran to the Department of State, August 26, 1950, ibid., 1054. 29. Kahin, “Indonesian Politics and Nationalism,” 172; David Mozingo, Chinese Policy Toward Indonesia, 1949–1967 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976), 86–90. 30. Telegram, Cochran to the Department of State, August 26, 1950, FRUS, 1950, 6: 1054–57. 31. Report on Indonesia, vol. 1, no. 48 (June 30, 1950), 1–2. 32. Telegram, Cochran to the Department of State, July 28, 1950, FRUS, 1950, 6: 1040, fn. 1. 33. Telegram, Department of State to Cochran, July 26, 1950, ibid., 1039–40; Telegram, Cochran to the Department of State, July 28, 1950, ibid., 1040, fn. 1. 34. Telegram, Cochran to the Department of State, August 26, 1950, ibid., 1055–57. 35. Telegram, Department of State to Cochran, May 24, 1950, ibid., 1025–27; Telegram, Cochran to the Department of State, June 7, 1950, ibid., 1027–29; Telegram, Cochran to the Department of State, July 26, 1950, ibid., 1037–39; Telegram, Cochran to the Department of State, August 9, 1950, ibid., 1046–50. 36. Telegram, Department of State to Cochran, August 12, 1950, ibid., 1051, fn. 3. 37. Telegram, Cochran to the Department of State, August 16, 1950, ibid., 1051–52. 38. Telegram to the Department of State, August 26, 1950, ibid., 1056–57.

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39. Telegram, Cochran to the Department of State, September 30, 1950, ibid., 1069– 72. 40. Telegram, Cochran to the Department of State, October 10, 1950, ibid., 1078–80. 41. Telegram, Melby to the Department of State, October 11, 1950, ibid., 1080, fn. 2. 42. Telegram, Cochran to the Department of State, December 8, 1950, ibid., 1096–98. 43. Ibid. 44. For official view on the Indonesian position on the Chinese intervention in the Korean conflict, see Report on Indonesia, vol. 2, nos. 14–19. For discussion of Indonesian position in the United Nations, see among others, Lawrence S. Finkelstein, “Indonesia’s Record in the United Nations,” International Conciliation, no. 474 (November 1951), 526–33. 45. For a discussion on this dilemma of dependence, see Franklin B. Weinstein, Indonesian Foreign Policy and the Dilemma of Dependence: From Sukarno to Soeharto (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976). 46. Telegram, Cochran to the Department of State, February 3, 1951, FRUS, 1951 (Asia and the Pacific) (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977), 6: 145–47. 47. Ibid., 147. 48. Memorandum, Lacy to Assistant Secretary Rusk, September 5, 1951, ibid., 140–41. 49. Memorandum, Lacy to the Assistant Secretary for Economic Affairs, February 15, 1951, ibid., 597–98. See also Telegram, Department of State to Cochran, February 15, 1951, ibid., 596–97. 50. Telegram, Acting Secretary Webb to Cochran, February 24, 1951, ibid., 606–7. 51. On the controversy between the ECA and the State Department, see Memorandum of Conversation, February 15, 1951, ibid., 598–602; Telegram, Cochran to Department of State, February 17, 1951, ibid., 603–5; Memorandum, Rusk to Griffin, February 20, 1951, ibid., 605–6; Memorandum, Lacy to Rusk, March 19, 1951, ibid., 619–23; Memorandum of Conversation, March 20, 1951, ibid., 623–25. 52. Telegram, Cochran to the Department of State, April 27, 1951, ibid., 642–43. 53. Kahin, “Indonesian Politics and Nationalism,” 177. 54. Telegram, Department of State to Cochran, May 9, 1951, FRUS, 1950, 6: 647, fn. 2. 55. Memorandum, Rusk to Secretary Acheson, May 14, 1951, ibid., 650–52. 56. Telegram, Department of State to Cochran, May 11, 1951, ibid., 647–49. 57. Telegram, Department of State to Cochran, May 14, 1951, ibid., 653. 58. See especially telegram, Cochran to the Department of State, May 15, 1951, ibid., 655, fn. 5. 59. Telegram, Cochran to the Department of State, June 21, 1951, ibid., 681–82. 60. Mozingo, Chinese Policy toward Indonesia, 98–100. 61. Herbert Feith, The Decline of Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1962), 187–92. 62. Ibid., 192. 63. Ibid., 193–96. 64. Telegram, Acting Secretary of State Webb to Cochran, November 23, 1951, FRUS, 1951, 6: 729–33. 65. Telegram, Cochran to the Department of State, December 11, 1951, ibid., 749.

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66. Telegram, Cochran to the State Department, February 19, 1952, FRUS, 1952–1954 (East Asia and the Pacific) (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1987), 12: 268–69. 67. For discussion on the Indonesian side of MSA Agreement, see Kahin, “Indonesian Politics and Nationalism,” 193–94; Feith, Decline of Constitutional Democracy, 198–201. 68. Telegram, Ambassador Cochran to the Department of State, January 7, 1952, FRUS, 1952–1954, 12: 246–48; Telegram, Ambassador Cochran to the Department of State, February 18, 1952, ibid., 266–67. 69. Telegram, Department of State to Cochran, January 8, 1952, ibid., 248. 70. Telegram, Cochran to the Department of State, February 18, 1952, ibid., 266– 67; Telegram, Cochran to the Department of State, February 22, 1952, ibid., 271–74. 71. Telegram, Department of State to Cochran, February 22, 1952, ibid., 274, fn. 1; Cochran to the Department of State, February 22, 1952, ibid., 274–75. 72. Memorandum, Samuel T. Parelman, Special Assistant for Far Eastern Regional Program, to Assistant Secretary John Allison, June 20, 1952, ibid., 249, fn. 1. 73. “Observations of John M. Allison on his tour of U.S. Missions in the Far East, September 26 to November 16, 1952,” Memorandum, Allison to the Secretary of State, December 5, 1952, Department of State Central Files, 790.00/12-552, The Far East, 1950–1954, reel 3. See also John M. Allison, “U.S. Diplomacy in Southeast Asia: The Limits of Policy,” in William Henderson, ed., Southeast Asia: Problems of United States Policy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1963), 170. 74. Telegram, British Embassy, Jakarta, to the Foreign Office, February 16, 1951, FH1631/6. FO371/92510, Public Record Office, Great Britain.

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3. Avoiding the “Rank of Denmark”: Dutch Fears about Loss of Empire in Southeast Asia Anne L. Foster

It took Vietnam thirty years, and required two immense and destructive wars, to gain its complete independence. Malaya was reoccupied after World War II with relative ease, and the independence struggle there developed soon after. Malaysia and Britain then fought a bitter, protracted war before Malaysia gained independence in 1957. The tragic enormity of those two cases has overshadowed the decolonization process in the rest of Southeast Asia. A casual assumption that, by contrast, the process in the Philippines, Burma, and Indonesia was relatively easy continues to pervade much of the literature. A.J. Stockwell, writing in the authoritative Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, warns against the way in which “the brevity of the colonial reoccupation and the speed with which the colonial empires were cleared out of Southeast Asia has tempted commentators” to see nationalist success and full independence as “inevitable” in the immediate aftermath of World War II.1 The warning is an especially apt one for the case of Indonesia, which is often quickly passed over, as though the nearly five-year struggle, which involved serious fighting, nearly 200,000 Dutch troops, and UN involvement, was a mere blip. The reputation of the Dutch as a people devoted to such values as neutrality, development aid, and what they might call pragmatic approaches to such issues as prostitution and drug use, reinforces the tendency to assume that the Dutch must have been equally pragmatic about the impossibility of their return to rule over “the Indies” after World War II. Dutch officials, in the spring and summer of 1945, however, appear to have assumed, pragmatically in their minds, that they would find it relatively easy to move back into the Netherlands Indies, offering perhaps some additional

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steps on the slow evolutionary trail to greater autonomy, but essentially reclaiming the status that they held before 1941. Although the transition from this complacent assumption of returning to life the way it had been was replaced in a mere five years with acknowledgment of new international realities, and with a transfer of sovereignty to Indonesia, the intervening years were wrenching for the Dutch. Many Dutch commentators, then and ever since, have used the word “trauma” to describe how involved Dutch felt about the growing realization that the Indies had become Indonesia.2 Traditionally, there have been two explanations for why the transition occurred so quickly, and why it did not involve the kind of protracted military struggle seen in both Vietnam and Malaysia: first, the nationalist movement in Indonesia was strong, supported by a broad cross-section of Indonesians, and second, the willingness of the nationalist leaders of the Republic of Indonesia to quite firmly suppress the Communist elements within the nationalist movement meant that the United States lended crucial support to Indonesians, and withdrew it from the Dutch.3 Scholars in recent years have usually cited the interplay between these factors in explaining the timing and nature of Indonesian independence, while Indonesian memoirs emphasize, unsurprisingly, the strength of nationalism and Dutch memoirs tend to decry their abandonment by the United States.4 An inadvertent result of this approach is that the Dutch themselves—their actions, plans, even their efforts at compromise and obstruction—have been relatively neglected. In the aftermath of World War II, Dutch officials and those traditionally involved in colonial matters (such as planters and business leaders) had a strong desire to return to the familiar and profitable pre–World War II situation. They simultaneously had an equally strong fear that failing to regain the Indies would be devastating for the Netherlands. They feared economic hardship exceeding that of the Depression, and impotence on the world political stage. The famous, within Dutch circles, expression of this fear was that without Indonesia, the Netherlands would “sink to the rank of Denmark.”5 Between 1945 and the end of 1949, when Indonesia became an independent nation, these Dutch not only had to adjust themselves to the new realities of decolonization, but also had simultaneously to imagine and create a new international role for the Netherlands. The looming Cold War provided the Dutch with an explanation for why they had to leave Indonesia, and simultaneously provided them with a new international role to play.

World War II and the Effects of Occupation Uniquely among pairs of European colonial powers and Southeast Asian colonies, both the Netherlands and the Indies were militarily defeated and oc-

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cupied during World War II. Malaya, Burma, Singapore, and the Philippines suffered military defeat and occupation, but Britain and the United States did not. In France, following a humiliating defeat in June 1940, the France of Vichy collaborated with Nazi Germany. This explains why Germany’s ally, Japan, allowed the French to stay on in Indochina until March 1945 when the Japanese finally removed the French in expectation of an Allied attack. The Netherlands was overrun by Germany even more quickly than France, after only a few days of fighting in May 1940. German troops and officials imposed an occupation that many Dutch continue to resent, even though few living Dutch actually experienced it. The Dutch government in exile in London attempted to plan for continued rule over the Indies despite German occupation of the Netherlands; these plans did acknowledge that the Indies would likely have more autonomy for the duration of the war. Implementation had merely begun when Japan attacked throughout Southeast Asia, and the defeat of Dutch and local troops in the Indies was nearly as swift as it had been in Europe. Most Dutch officials and soldiers were killed or placed in concentration camps for the duration; some fled to Australia to maintain an exiled governmental presence.6 This dual defeat and occupation meant that the Dutch were more completely cut off from their colony and colonial subjects than were any of the other colonial powers in Asia. Dutch officials attempted throughout the war to make contacts, conduct intelligence-gathering expeditions, and provide material support to any anti-Japanese resistance efforts in the islands. These efforts were, nearly without exception, dismal failures. In part the failures stemmed from Dutch dependence on the other Allied nations for even the most basic of supplies or logistics, including transportation, training, equipment, and certainly funds. Governments-in-exile, whether in Australia or England, operated under hardships that provided little of the necessary support for complicated missions to the Indies. Additionally, the circumstances of the retreat from the Indies meant that few qualified Dutch, and even fewer pro-Dutch Indonesians were available to lead these missions. A handful of reconnaissance missions did reach the islands, but their members were almost without exception captured by Indonesians or Japanese, and usually executed.7 The result was that exiled Dutch officials had four years of longing for a return to the Indies, and four years of no knowledge about developments in the Indies. The longing was a nostalgic emotion, an expressed desire for a return to life as it had been during the high colonialism of the first decades of the twentieth century, when the Dutch imagined themselves to have been caring and providing for their subjects. The Dutch version of the civilizing mission was called the “ethical policy,” and the exiled Dutch imagined the grateful response of Indonesians upon return of the generous Dutch. The longer the

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period of no knowledge stretched, however, the more elaborate this fantasy grew. For fantasy it was. Nearly all scholars of the Dutch effort to re-take the Indies after World War II note, nearly without comment, that the Dutch seem truly to have expected to be welcomed by the Indonesians, who they remembered as docile, compliant, and calm.8 Memories of anticolonial rebellion, of why the Dutch believed they had to create the island prison of Boven Digoel, of indigenous political parties so contentious that they had been banned, had faded from Dutch minds in the midst of four years of longing and not knowing. Perhaps then, they did expect to be welcomed as they got off the boat from Australia or from England or from the Netherlands itself. The expectation was born out of hope and fantasy, not out of experience. Another group of Dutch likewise dreamed for four years of the return of “their” Indies, but the dream was wrapped in a nightmare. These Dutch had not escaped to Australia, but spent the war years in concentration camps or in forced labor. They watched many friends and family succumb to disease, torture, rape, and death. Their knowledge of developments in Indonesia was not much greater than that of their compatriots in exile, however. They were walled off, or transported to wherever the Japanese needed labor, and perhaps saw Indonesians suffering as well. Some imagined Indonesian hatred turned mainly against Japan. Their longing was not nostalgic, however, and they moved as purposefully as they could after August 1945 to reclaim exactly what had been theirs before the war. Again, they acted as if the world had stood as still for Indonesians as it had for them.9 This Dutch expectation of unobstructed return to their Indies shaped Dutch attitudes, Dutch policies, and Dutch actions in the 1945–1950 period, not merely with regard to Indonesia itself, but also in large measure relations with Britain and the United States, especially in how to respond to the quickly developing Cold War. Initially, planning for a return to the Indies required nearly all available Dutch financial, bureaucratic, and military resources that could be expended outside the Netherlands proper. Indeed, Dutch officials expected assistance from their wartime allies in re-taking the Indies primarily out of the expectation that the colonial world would be re-created throughout Southeast Asia. Early indications that the help from Britain and the United States would be minimal, by Dutch standards, left the Dutch wondering why their allies were abandoning them.

The Changed World of 1945 The war ended in Europe several months before it ended in Asia, of course, and the liberated Dutch began planning their return to the Indies as soon as

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they could. In the midst of this planning, Dutch officials began to see the initial signs that perhaps their plans would encounter obstacles growing out of global politics. They were disappointed when the Allied military command transferred responsibility for the Indies from the United States to Britain. They understood that the United States had many more resources at its disposal, and would have been better able to facilitate return of the Dutch to the islands. Americans had been training for that task as well, with some learning local languages and studying the geography. Britain would, the Dutch believed, be stretched too thin, and most likely prioritize re-taking their own colonies. The unexpectedly quick end to the war and the lack of transport ships meant the worst fears of the Dutch were realized.10 Stein Tonnesson has written persuasively about the importance for the continuing strength of Vietnamese efforts against the French of the power vacuum that existed there, as no Allied troops arrived in Vietnam for four weeks after the formal end to the war.11 The power vacuum was of crucial importance in Indonesia as well. Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta, both of whom had been active nationalists for decades, declared Indonesia’s independence on August 17, 1945. Many Indonesians, especially on the most heavily populated island of Java, remembered the decades of struggle against the Dutch that both men had led, understood or forgave the few years of collaborating with the Japanese, and were willing to follow Sukarno and Hatta. Since no European troops of any kind arrived in Indonesia until late September, the newly proclaimed Republic of Indonesia had several weeks of ostensible power vacuum to assert itself. The reluctance of Britain’s highest authority in the area, General Philip Christison, to move decisively in support of Dutch rule loomed large in Dutch explanations for their later difficulties in re-taking the islands.12 Perhaps Christison did sympathize with Indonesian nationalism, but he also faced concrete limitations. Transport ships to move people and materiel to the islands were inadequate. Even with more ships, there were too few troops available to disarm the Japanese, facilitate release of the Dutch from the camps, and fight the Indonesians. And the troops that were available were largely from India. It seemed unlikely, at best, that these troops would fight against Asian nationalists attempting to establish their own government. Britishled troops, like those of all Allied powers, believed too that the war they had signed up to fight was over. They wanted to go home. In memoirs, high-level Dutch officials acknowledge these limitations that the British faced, yet simultaneously complain that if their British and U.S. allies had placed any priority on getting Dutch troops themselves to the Indies, that the Dutch would have been prepared to take over. Since these Dutch believed that most Indonesians wanted them to return, it was reasonable also for

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them to believe that Dutch troops would have succeeded where the British-led troops instead acquiesced in the rule of such quislings as Sukarno, and were unable to quell the rowdy, sometimes violent young pemuda, who were the most visible face of Indonesian nationalism.13 These Dutch officials were confronting the first of several new global realities as they realized that British strategy toward a longtime colonial colleague was determined not merely by Britain’s need to take the sensibilities of their colonial subjects seriously, but even more shocking, that British military officers themselves might sympathize with the nationalist aspirations of Indians, and by extension, Indonesians. Some Dutch officials, especially those who were among the first to return to Indonesia and had substantial prewar experience of the islands, began the process of slow adjustment to this new reality of Asian nationalism. Hubertus J. van Mook epitomizes this group. He had spent the war in exile in Australia, and returned with the first Dutch civilians, in the role of Lieutenant Governor General. He was a political progressive born and raised in the Indies, and believed that he understood Indonesians. Yet even van Mook expected to easily reassume his prewar position in the Indies, and to offer, as a gift, a gradual road to independence to grateful Indonesians. His contacts among educated Indonesians soon convinced him that slightly more proactive steps were necessary, and van Mook became an insistent voice for negotiating with “moderate” Indonesians. Already by the end of 1945, he understood that the Dutch needed to offer something “definite and detailed” to the Indonesians, which would be sufficiently beneficial for them to feel it was “safe” to accept it.14 Van Mook had not become an Indonesian nationalist himself. Soon after making the above statement, he was also complaining publicly in England of the British officers’ habit of dealing directly with Indonesian leaders of the Republic. This gave, in his view, the appearance that the Dutch had no authority in Indonesia. Still, van Mook’s ideas and tactics were considered so liberal by other Dutch, especially in the military, that he was constantly undercut by them. His assessments and proposals were not forwarded to The Hague. Dutch officials such as Admiral Conrad E. Helfrich publicly contradicted him. Van Mook’s tenuous position of attempting to promote gradual, Dutch-controlled steps to autonomy eroded, and by 1947, he was in the forefront of launching the Dutchinstigated, so-called police action against the Republic.15

Domestic Politics in the Netherlands and the Impossibility of Negotiation In both Britain and France after World War II, the political parties of the left enjoyed prestige and at least shared in political power. Although these parties

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sometimes had a mere verbal commitment to decolonization and in reality were not much more anxious than Europeans on the right of the political spectrum to grant independence, there were in both Britain and France vocal expressions of support from within the political power structure for granting independence. In the immediate aftermath of the war, the political parties in the Netherlands began to re-create themselves. One was a primarily socialist party, the Labor Party, generally attracting the second highest level of support. The other important parties were the People’s Party (Catholic, in first place), the Anti-Revolutionary Party (in third place), and the Christian Historical Union (Protestant, and the fourth-largest party). A Liberal Party was revived by the end of 1945, loosely motivated by a platform of less government control over business than was promoted by most of the other parties. Although it held few seats, these were often the crucial few needed to pass legislation, including about Indonesia.16 The Labor Party, the only likely candidate among all of them to support even autonomy for Indonesia, had been created from the remnants of several other groupings. It therefore had no legacy of support for democracy, autonomy, or self-rule for the Indies. It also had to compete with the religion-affiliated parties for working class voters. Since support was strong, if uninformed, for a policy of reasserting Dutch rule over the Indies, the Labor Party decided to formally support the position of the Catholic People’s Party, which opposed decolonization. Labor Party leaders believed they would never become a mainstream party, given their connection to socialism in the fundamentally conservative Netherlands, unless they took this stance.17 In late June 1945, the government, led by Willem Schermerhorn, took power from the government-in-exile in London. Schermerhorn had been very active in the Dutch underground during World War II, and enjoyed the respect of the Dutch people. His initial focus was on “doorbrak en vernieuwing,” best translated as “breakthrough and renewal.” He was a leader within the Netherlands People’s Movement, which became a constituent part of the Labor Party. Schermerhorn was not well informed about the Indies, and indeed his conception of the reforms that Dutch society and economic life desperately needed focused primarily on the Netherlands itself. During his first months in office, both his personal interests and knowledge as well as the pressing needs of the Dutch people meant that he left policy about Indonesia largely to people in Asia, especially H.J. van Mook.18 After all, the islands had not even been liberated yet. Schermerhorn’s government was an appointed one, and elections were scheduled for May 1946. During that first year, then, Dutch politicians lived in a nearly crisis atmosphere of attempting to form and organize political parties; meet the basic needs of the Dutch people for food, jobs, and housing; plan

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for the future, which to Schermerhorn and his followers meant a major reorganization of the relationship between government and industry; and create a viable policy for Indonesia. Schermerhorn himself seems to have had sympathy for movement toward autonomy for Indonesia, although within a federal structure, and his cabinet did as well. The upcoming elections meant, however, that facts on the ground in Indonesia were sometimes the last thing to determine Dutch policy regarding Indonesia. The tangible contribution of the Schermerhorn government to resolution of the Indonesia situation was facilitation of the first important conference in The Hague between the parties, known as the Hoge Veluwe Conference, held in the spring of 1946. Van Mook had informed leaders of the Republic that the Dutch envisioned that Indonesia would gain its independence, but that there should and would be a “transitional,” sometimes called “probationary,” period in which the Republic of Indonesia would exercise much de facto control over the territory it held, but would be a constituent part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.19 The Hoge Veluwe Conference generally receives little attention from scholars because it broke down nearly as soon as it began. One Indonesian representative remembered that he knew within five minutes of the beginning of the talks that the conference would not succeed.20 However, the reasons for the failure of this early attempted negotiation are revealing for the entire five-year course of Dutch–Indonesians negotiations over decolonization. Van Mook’s proposal about a transitional or probationary period leading to complete independence was less than what Indonesian leaders wanted. But they were willing to accept it if accompanied by de facto recognition of their authority over most of Java and Sumatra. Van Mook was not willing to grant that recognition on his own authority, but believed it would be acceptable to the Dutch government and so encouraged the Republic to send representatives to The Hague to negotiate. They did, and quickly discovered that officials in the Netherlands had considered Van Mook’s ideas to be merely a basis for discussion, not representations of government-negotiating positions. Two key points for the Indonesians were not acceptable to the Dutch. First, the Dutch were willing to concede Republican authority over only Java and Madura, not over Sumatra. Second, the Dutch insisted that during the transitional period, Indonesia would be part of a Commonwealth of the Netherlands, while the Indonesians wanted to have free-state status, based on their positive impressions of what the French had offered the Vietnamese.21 Dutch insistence on these matters was disappointing to the Indonesians, but of most disappointment was the result of growing realization that the Schermerhorn government clearly was afraid to take any strong stance on questions related to Indonesia. The new Labor Party wanted to retain its status as the key

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coalition partner with the Catholic party in the cabinet, and worried that a position perceived to be too pro-Indonesian would cost them votes. Dutch socialists, including Schermerhorn, warned the Indonesians that a right-leaning government would definitely oppose Indonesian independence, and lead to “violence and chaos.”22 The Dutch clearly expected that this warning, a warning that failure to agree to Dutch terms might mean “they would be compelled to use the military,” would be persuasive.23 The delegates from the Republic tended to see the Dutch offers as holding no improvement over promises made since 1942, when Queen Wilhelmina had promised a new status for the Indies, and wondered what their struggle had been for if only to get what they had been promised for nearly four years. Additionally, they had their own domestic politics to consider, as the insistent and loud calls for “100% merdeka” (100% freedom) reminded them daily.24 These talks took place in the spring of 1946, before the Netherlands had landed more than a few thousand troops of the nearly 200,000 who would eventually be sent to Indonesia, before any elected government was formed in the Netherlands, before Indonesian claims for independence were heard in the United Nations, before the United States got involved in the negotiations, and before the Dutch-instigated police actions of 1947 and 1948. Yet these talks embody most of the problems that would prevent a non-violent negotiated settlement of the issue, and even at this early date, demonstrate how the interplay of Dutch domestic politics and new global realities shaped Dutch understandings of their options. In the Netherlands, the period during and immediately after World War II saw the beginning of the transitional period away from a political party system based almost entirely on religion-affiliated parties to a more secular system. The Labor Party worried constantly about appearing too radical, about too great an association with international socialism, and often appeared more as a populist version of their frequent coalition partner, the Catholic People’s Party, whose very name suggests the kind of challenge it posed to the Labor Party. The Socialist left had no tradition of anticolonialism, and within the electoral constraints the Labor Party felt, they were not about to develop one.25 It was not merely timidity on the part of Labor Party politicians, however. The Dutch people were firmly in favor of retaining the Indies, although the sentiment was rooted in fear of diminished prosperity and world status more than specific attachment to the colony for most people. Those fears were, initially, powerful forces, though. Dirk Stikker, who as a member of the Liberal Party would serve as foreign minister during crucial months of 1948–1949, remembered the way these political affected his party’s campaign in 1948. He

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had helped negotiate a party platform in 1946 that he thought carefully struck a balance: The party supported the “unity of the Kingdom of the Netherlands” and within that the “self-mastery of the component parts.”26 The party was rethinking this stance for the 1948 elections, and Stikker went to Indonesia to assess the situation, with what he believed was a promise to defer any decisions on Indonesia policy until his return. Instead, when he came back, he saw provocative posters with the slogans “Change Course!” and “Are You Just as Tired of It?” These statements referred to the government’s emphasis on negotiation with the Indonesians, and appealed to the desire of the Dutch to use any means to keep their colony. Stikker was furious, but his fellow party members clearly believed that electoral success depended on a more forceful message than the one Stikker wanted to promote.27 Dutch and Indonesians would negotiate numerous times, come to several interim agreements, and fight two Dutch-instigated police actions in the midst of nearly continuous guerilla warfare before the final agreement in November 1949 to transfer sovereignty to Indonesia the following month. From the Linggadjati Agreement in November 1946, to the Renville Agreement of early 1948 and Dutch responses to the duBois-Critchley proposal, and the similar Cochran Plan of the summer and early fall of 1948, the Dutch responses were almost always the same: They would negotiate, but always with an eye to preventing the leaders of the Republic of Indonesia from gaining full-fledged sovereignty. Some Dutch, such as Foreign Minister Dirk Stikker and former prime minister Schermerhorn, came gradually to believe that Indonesia would inevitably be independent. They still, however, wanted to control the timing, the manner, and the outcome of that process in a way that looked like less than full independence to the Indonesians.28 To some degree, these officials pursued this strategy long past the point of effectiveness because they simply wanted “their Indies” again. But Indonesian independence also continued, right up until 1950, to be a serious electoral issue for Dutch politicians, who could ill afford to alienate a public that also feared loss of the colony.

International Politics, the Cold War, and Changes in Dutch Policy Scholars, and even contemporary observers, have believed that the Cold War played a significant role in the decolonization process for Indonesia. Their focus has been on the role that Cold War politics played in convincing U.S. officials to switch from a distinctly pro-Dutch policy to, first, one of technical neutrality that nonetheless was a de facto pro-Dutch policy to, by late 1948, a

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policy of pressuring the Dutch to move toward decolonization. The U.S. role was of crucial importance. In the winter of 1948, the United States warned the Dutch government that future Marshall Plan aid depended on the Dutch pursuing a more rational, less costly solution to the problem of Indonesia. Since the United States was providing both the funding that enabled the Dutch government not merely to wage their battle in Indonesia but also necessary funds for rebuilding the war-ravaged Netherlands, and since the United States had supplied, free or at extremely low cost on very generous terms, the military equipment for the battle in Indonesia, Dutch officials did believe they had no choice but to acquiesce in U.S. demands. They protested at the time, and have resented the power play ever since, but this U.S. move did break through the logjam of Dutch intransigence, and allow the Round Table Conference of 1949 to conclude with an independence agreement. Both scholars and participants have typically considered that explanation sufficient to explain why the Dutch backed down at that moment. It was a powerful threat, one the United States did not use against the French regarding Vietnam. Quite probably the United States would never have used such a threat in dealing with the France–Vietnam dilemma, for several reasons. The Vietnamese nationalist movement was too communist. Indonesians had already demonstrated, in suppressing the Madiun Communist uprising in 1948, that their nationalist leaders had different political leanings. Equally important, the Communist Party in France had greater strength than in the Netherlands, so U.S. policymakers had less fear about creating a backlash. Finally, it is highly likely that such a threat would not have worked to dissuade the French from following a policy they wanted to pursue, while the Dutch did change course despite the desire of many, probably most, Dutch politicians to continue to attempt to retain the Indies. (On French policy and the Cold War, see chapter one in this volume.) Dutch attitudes about the meaning of the Cold War for their nation and their international politics provide the key reasons why the Dutch government finally decided, after five years of determined struggle, to acquiesce in what had only months before seemed unthinkable. Dutch political leaders began to realize by early 1948 that retaining the colony would be very expensive. The guerrilla nature of the fighting meant that the Indonesians could likely maintain armed struggle nearly indefinitely, increasing the financial burden of maintaining a large army in the islands while preventing the rebuilding of the revenue-generating plantations and mines. Even during the Depression, the Indies had had exports worth well over half a billion U.S. dollars. In 1948, economic activity had barely recovered and the entire Indonesian territory ex-

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ported almost nothing.29 If the purpose of Dutch colonialism in the Indies was to make money for the Netherlands as well as provide the tiny European country a claim to great power status, throwing so many of the country’s scarce resources into a fight to retain it might not make economic sense. Few Dutch politicians were willing to acknowledge that possibility, even to themselves, but their difficulties in meeting domestic economic and social reconstruction needs while also waging war in Indonesia did prompt them to respond more flexibly in late 1948 and early 1949 than they had in 1946 to possible ways out of their dilemma. The last half of 1948 was a difficult time for the Dutch. In September 1948, the Indonesian Communist Party launched an uprising against the Republic of Indonesia. The communists believed that their timing was good, since Indonesians were getting frustrated with the fact that none of the many negotiated agreements seemed to be leading to independence. The Republic, led at that time by Mohammed Hatta, acted quickly and forcefully to suppress the uprising and did convince U.S. political leaders that the Indonesians had at least the potential to be U.S. Cold War allies. As U.S. policy moved slowly but steadily in the direction of pressure on the Dutch to grant independence, the Dutch themselves began to think more seriously about their own aggressive solution to what they called the “chaos” of Indonesia.30 Washington policymakers made it clear that they would not tolerate a military solution. In early December, the Dutch received a message from the Department of State warning that any Dutch military action was sure to be met with guerrilla warfare, which would “seriously deplete the resources of the Netherlands and tend to nullify the effect of appropriations made to the Netherlands and Indonesia under the Economic Cooperation Administration.”31 In other words, the United States warned that Dutch military action in Indonesia was highly likely to result in a cut-off of Marshall Plan aid. The Dutch understood this very well. Foreign Minister Stikker responded by telling the U.S. ambassador that the Netherlands could “not receive” such a note. Everyone understood, however, that the wording might be slightly revised but the basic policy position would stand. Stikker, in his memoir, characteristically complained that he was placed in an almost impossible position by this U.S. stance, since the hardliners merely stiffened their opposition to negotiations and independence as a matter of personal pride.32 A few days later, the Dutch launched their second police action against the Republic of Indonesia. Although it was initially a military triumph, it was also an international political disaster. The military triumph was quickly eroded by an increase in guerilla warfare. But perhaps even more worrisome for the Dutch, the international disaster persisted: The UN Security Council

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passed a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire, release of all Republican prisoners, resumption of negotiations based on principles in previous agreements, and an early date set for transfer of sovereignty.33 But if 1948 was a disastrous year for the Dutch in their Indonesia policy, it was in other ways a much more rewarding year, and it is in the rewards of those years that Dutch policymakers began to see their way forward. Foreign Minister Stikker, whose memoirs claim that he was always in favor of a transfer of sovereignty for Indonesia but wanted merely to ensure that it was done in an atmosphere of “law and order,” also wrote about all the other things he was thinking about during 1948. He became foreign minister in August 1948; in September Queen Wilhelmina stepped down in favor of her daughter Juliana. Additionally, the Netherlands foreign policy focused on support for Benelux, resumption of normal trade with Germany, and early negotiations about the Marshall Plan and among the European nations attempting to form the Organization for European Economic Cooperation, as well as efforts to work within the United Nations, and subsequently to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to provide for Dutch security. Dutch officials were deeply involved in these cooperative measures, both in the economic and security realms.34 Indonesia was a time-consuming and traumatic issue during 1948– 1949, but Dutch officials were in other ways already moving on, establishing for themselves and the nation a leading role as a cooperative, consistent, dedicated participant in the multilateral organizations designed to bring peace and prosperity to Europe, and ideally, the world.

Conclusion Decolonization was clearly an important part of the shift in official Dutch minds. Perhaps ironically, they also were freed to pursue a foreign policy that rooted them in Europe and restored their sense that they offered support to progressive global forces. The initial signs of success for these multilateral organizations in 1948 to 1950 provided Dutch politicians with a way to envision a Netherlands without the Indies. When the transfer of sovereignty occurred, at the end of December 1949, that vision was not complete, let alone realized. Neither Dutch officials nor the Dutch people knew that they would find a new role, as loyal ally of the United States in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), opposed to the Soviet Union, as an industrial powerhouse on the European continent, and as a leading source of development aid and expertise in what soon came to be called the Third World. Some Dutch officials, however, had seen the possibility that these new roles, ones building on but very

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different from those the Dutch traditionally had played in the world, might replace the role that being a great colonial power had played in Dutch economics, politics, and even sense of identity.35 Despite lingering irritation with the United States for pushing decolonization, the Dutch became among the most loyal of Cold War allies for the United States.

Notes 1. A.J. Stockwell, “Southeast Asia in War and Peace: The End of European Colonial Empires,” in Nicholas Tarling, ed. Cambridge History of Southeast Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 346. 2. The most cited work to use this word, in the title, is Arend Lijphart’s The Trauma of Decolonization: The Dutch and West New Guinea (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966). Although this work ostensibly explores the last stage of decolonization, when New Guinea was finally ceded to Indonesia in the early 1960s, Lijphart analyses the role of New Guinea in ideas about colonialism and decolonization throughout the period 1919–1965. 3. Implicitly, sometimes explicitly, comparisons are suggested. Malaysia’s nationalist movement, as is sometimes noted, was not as broadly developed as that in Indonesia. And the Indonesian nationalists, by contrast with those in Vietnam, demonstrated their willingness to suppress communism, thereby reassuring the United States that an independent Indonesia would fall on the “right” side in the growing Cold War divide. 4. Frances Gouda, who has provided perhaps the most serious and multilingual of recent studies, illustrates the trend to cite the interplay. She provides ample evidence for the popular support enjoyed by the Republic of Indonesia, and the depth of its leaders commitment to independence for the nation of Indonesia, while also considering the crucial decision of the United States to switch support from the Netherlands to Indonesians as necessary for attainment of independence without a major war. Her impressive book is American Visions of the Netherlands East Indies/Indonesia: US Foreign Policy and Indonesian Nationalism, 1920–1946 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2002. For a more popular account that provides a similar perspective, see also Paul F. Gardner’s interesting Shared Hopes, Separate Fears: Fifty Years of U.S.Indonesian Relations (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997). Gardner was a longtime U.S. diplomat with service in Indonesia. 5. Hans Meijer, “Images of Indonesia in the Dutch Press, 1950–1962: Characteristics of an Imperial Hangover,” Intinerario 17, 2 (1993), 55. 6. Stockwell, “Southeast Asia in War and Peace,” Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, 329–336; Bob de Graaff, “Hot Intelligence in the Tropics: Dutch Intelligence Operations in the Netherlands East Indies during the Second World War,” Journal of Contemporary History 22, 4 (1987), 564–65. 7. De Graaff, “Hot Intelligence,” 563–84. 8. Tessel Pollmann, “The Indonesian Revolution through the Eyes of Dutch Novelists and Reporters,” Indonesia 69 (April 2000), 93–95, with the descriptive words appearing on page 94.

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9. One of the most thoughtful explorations of this group is Elsbeth LocherScholten, “Van Indonesische urn tot Indisch monument: vijftig jaar Nederlandse herinnering aan de Tweede Wereldoorlog in Azië,” Beijdragen en mededelingen betreffende de geschiedenis der Nederlanden 114, 2 (1999) 192–222. 10. H.J. van Mook, Stakes of Democracy in South-East Asia (London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1950), 174–76, is good for the perspective of a participant. See also J.J.P. de Jong, Diplomatie of Strijd: Het Nederlands beleid tegenover de Indonesische revolutie 1945–1947 (Amsterdam: Boom Meppel, 1988), 40–46. 11. Stein Tonnesson, The Vietnamese Revolution of 1945: Roosevelt, Ho Chi Minh and De Gaulle in a World at War (London: Sage Publications, 1991). 12. The basic story of the Indonesian declaration of independence is easily found in Gouda, American Visions, 119–38. For British military operations, a good starting place is David Jordan, “‘A Particularly Exacting Operation’: British Forces and the Battle of Surabaya, November 1945,” Small Wars and Insurgencies 11, no. 2 (Winter 2000), 89–114, which is broader in scope than the title suggests. 13. Van Mook, Stakes of Democracy, 182–89; Dirk Stikker, Men of Responsibility: A Memoir (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), 78–81. See also C. Smit, De Dekolonisatie van Indonesië (Groningen: H.D. Tjeenk Willink, 1976), 11–13. 14. Laurens Van der Post, the South African officer sent by Britain to assist the Dutch in exile through World War II and who went with the Dutch into Java in 1945, wrote about Van Mook’s plan in a report he sent back to Britain. A copy is included in Van der Post’s memoir, The Admiral’s Baby (London: John Murray, 1996), 235. In his own memoirs, Van Mook played down his personal role in this episode. See Van Mook, Stakes of Democracy, 212–14. 15. Robert McMahon, Colonialism and Cold War: The United States and the Struggle for Indonesia Independence, 1945–1949 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), 168–69. 16. Stikker, Men of Responsibility, 65. 17. The position was controversial within the party. See the discussion in Dietrich Orlow, “The Paradoxes of Success: Dutch Social Democracy and Its Historiography,” Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis van Nederlanden 110, no. 1 (1995), 46–47. 18. Smit, De Dekolonisatie van Indonesië, 88–92; C. Smit De Indonesische Quaestie: De Wordingsgeschiedenis der Souvereiniteitsoverdracht (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1952), 72–73. 19. See the detailed discussion in de Jong, Diplomatie of Strijd, 177–95, esp. 182–83. 20. The “after five minutes” phrase is from a letter by Soedarsono, one of the Indonesian delegates, to Idrus Nasir Djajadiningrat, cited in Djajadiningrat, The Beginnings of the Indonesian–Dutch Negotiations and the Hoge Veluwe Talks, Cornell Modern Indonesia Project (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1958), 62. Also discussed in Robert J. McMahon, Colonialism and Cold War: The United States and the Struggle for Indonesian Independence, 1945–1949 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), 125. 21. Djajadiningrat, The Beginnings of the Indonesian–Dutch Negotiations, 54–56. Van Mook also remembered that the Vietnam example seemed appealing. See Van Mook, Stakes of Democracy, 213. 22. Statement of Schemerhorn, from the Summary Records of the Hoge Veluwe

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Conference, third session, April 14, 1946, quoted in Djajadiningrat, The Beginnings of the Indonesian–Dutch Negotiations, 93. 23. Djajadininigrat, The Beginnings of the Indonesian–Dutch Negotiations, 69. 24. Ibid., 76–80. See also discussion in Gouda, American Visions of the Netherlands East Indies, 181, and McMahon, Colonialism and Cold War, 125–29. 25. Dutch communists did formally oppose colonialism, but they were a negligible political force, holding at most a few seats in the larger Second Chamber. 26. Stikker, Men of Responsibility, 85. 27. Ibid., 101–2. 28. In ibid., 113, Stikker justified launching the Second Police Action in December 1948 because the Dutch needed to ensure that they could guarantee “law and order” in the newly independent Indonesia. Schemerhorn struggled in his diary with how to conceive of the ultimate responsibility and authority in Indonesia under agreements that seemed to grant it to the United States of Indonesia, when he did not fully believe that they could exercise it well. For example, see the entry for June 13, 1947 in W. Schemerhorn, Het dagboek van Schemerhorn, vol. 2, edited by C. Smit (Utrecht: Nederlands Historisch Genootschap, 1970), 603–4. 29. For the 1930s, see Anne Booth, “Four Colonies and a Kingdom: A Comparison of Fiscal, Trade, and Exchange Rate Policies in South East Asia in the 1930s,” Modern Asian Studies 37, no. 2 (2003), 429–60. For an overall discussion of the economic importance of Indonesia for the Netherlands, see H.L. Wesseling, “Post-Imperial Holland,” Journal of Contemporary History 15, no. 1 (January 1980), 132–34. 30. See Smit, Indonesische Quaestie, 180–85, for an explanation of how this view of the republic influenced Dutch policy. 31. McMahon, Colonialism and Cold War, 248. 32. Stikker, Men of Responsibility, 139. 33. McMahon, Colonialism and Cold War, 273. 34. Foreign Minister Stikker’s memoirs remind us of the extent of this involvement. See Men of Responsibility, 109, 145, 163–66, and 202–26. 35. Wesseling, “Post-Imperial Holland,” 130–31, also notes the new tasks that the Dutch created for themselves, although he dates the change a little later.

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4. Processing Decolonization: British Strategic Analysis of Conflict in Vietnam and Indonesia, 1945–1950 Martin Thomas

In the decade after 1945, the British governmental establishment remained the epicenter of an imperial information order. Colonial administrations, farflung garrisons, embassies, consulates and legations, and regional commissions and specialist observers inundated Whitehall departments with reportage of local political events, socioeconomic conditions, and potential threats to British interests. The rapid transmission of political, military, and economic intelligence about dependent territories was as pivotal to colonial policy in the age of decolonization as it had been in the earlier period of imperial conquest.1 In another sense, however, the focal point of imperial intelligence analysis was shifting fundamentally. On the one hand, both the Foreign Office and the service ministries saw a greater need for colonial policy advice to reflect the more widespread regional consequences of socio-political change in individual colonial territories. Alterations to the fabric of Western rule in individual colonies were likely to have ripple effects not only in other dependent states but also across entire continents.2 On the other hand, colonial systems were not expected to endure indefinitely. Indeed, after 1945, various schemes of self-government, limited autonomy, even outright independence, were increasingly commonplace throughout the British Empire. Some were devised during World War II. Others were hastily concocted in response to fast-changing local conditions. As a result, the timetables involved were deliberately vague, or else hopelessly optimistic. And those who arrogantly assumed that authority could be progressively delegated to compliant auxiliaries were often disappointed. Still, with relatively few exceptions, the expectation that a gradual withdrawal from

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direct imperial control should take place was integrated into the colonial policymaking process.3 By 1947, what Whitehall officials dubbed “forward thinking” pervaded a reorganized Colonial Office, which regarded colonial development, specialist expertise, and the cultivation of shared economic and strategic interests as the key to lasting relationships with Britain’s dependent territories.4 In light of these changes, the British government and its colonial satellites posed an additional question to their information providers and policy analysts: What were the prospects for an orderly transition from a centrally directed colonial system to a looser, but still British-controlled Commonwealth? In other words, were long-term “transfers of power” feasible, or would the British imperial masters face civil unrest, armed resistance, or forced eviction if they tried to cling on? In the late 1940s, the imperial information order was increasingly a matter of processing decolonization, trying to make sense of indigenous social movements, the influence of external forces and ideologies, and the power of organized anticolonial nationalism in order to assist a regulated transformation in Britain’s relationship with its colonies. A network of political reportage, security intelligence, and policy appreciations, originally developed to consolidate colonial power, was reconfigured to ensure that the continuation, adaptation, or abandonment of imperial authority took place as far as possible on British terms. Much of this information related to colonial state security, both internal and external. And useful evaluation of imperial intelligence demanded an appreciation, not just of conditions within colonial territories, but throughout neighboring regions as well. Nowhere was this more the case than in Southeast Asia, by 1945 the most unstable of all colonial theaters. From a British imperial perspective, the political upheaval in nearby South Asia that culminated in Indian independence and partition in 1947, as well as the humiliation of withdrawal from Palestine in the following year, had more immediate bearing on the future course of British decolonization and the strength of British imperial forces across the Asian continent.5 The British service chiefs’ intelligence advisers certainly viewed matters that way.6 However, Southeast Asia was still a source of considerable anxiety in Clement Attlee’s Labour government and the civil service advisers that served it during and after the final withdrawal of British occupation forces from French Indochina and the Dutch East Indies in 1945–1946. There were perhaps four main reasons for this. First, by 1947 Southeast Asia was an important nexus between the pressures of anticolonial nationalism and wider Cold War tension. Fears of Soviet interference in the region, typified by the establishment in 1946 of a large Soviet legation in Bangkok and the arrival

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of a far smaller Soviet military mission in Vietnam, were increasingly eclipsed in British minds by the more proximate threat of Chinese communism.7 The coincidence of Chinese regional expansionism with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) support for colonial liberation struggles threatened a spiral of conflict escalation more severe than in any other colonial theater.8 A second factor was the growing economic importance of Britain’s key Southeast Asian possession, the Malaya Federation, to the liquidity of sterling. By the time a communist-led rebellion erupted in Malaya in June 1948, the colony’s raw material exports were the principal dollar earners in the British Empire. And dollars were a precious commodity to a government struggling to maintain sterling convertibility. In 1948 the Malayan trade surplus with the dollar area stood at $170 million. The Korean War boom in strategic raw materials helped push this figure to $271 million in 1950 and $350 million in 1952 as international demand for Malayan rubber and tin surged.9 The prospect of worsening colonial unrest in Malaya and further disruption to British plans for an eventual transfer of power to a Malay-dominated government therefore caused profound disquiet not only among ministers, colonial officials, and military staffs, but in the corridors of the treasury as well.10 A third consideration here was the uncertain future of other British territories or Commonwealth states nearby. Even if Indochina fell to communism, a land invasion of Malaya by Chinese Communist forces was improbable, even more so if Thailand remained friendly, enabling British forces to hold the so-called “Songkhla position” that protected interior communications to the Malaysian peninsula.11 In a wider strategic context, however, the British were severely overstretched. Australasian confidence in Britain’s global power was undermined by the experience of the Pacific War, and during the late 1940s Australia, in particular, increasingly looked to the United States for Pacific security. By 1949, the survival of a British Hong Kong—depicted by Attlee’s government as “the Berlin of the east”—in a communist China seemed precarious.12 Newly independent Burma teetered on the brink of civil war.13 And India’s future as a cooperative political or strategic partner—already in doubt—might be further jeopardized if disorder gripped the territories on its eastern flank.14 The final factor to come into play in British strategic appreciations of the long-term future of Southeast Asia was the most obvious. Fellow imperial powers, France and the Netherlands, were in the grip of colonial war. The escalating conflict in Indochina and the more episodic violence in Indonesia threatened to destabilize the entire region, unraveling the best-laid Whitehall plans for the reconfiguration of Britain’s presence east of the Suez Canal. As Mark Lawrence has argued, there were always tensions in the governing Labour Party’s policy toward Indochina and the Dutch East Indies.15 Attlee’s

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premiership began with British occupation forces in place across southern Vietnam, Java, and Sumatra in fulfillment of pledges made at the Potsdam Conference. The military complications and political frictions that resulted from the presence of British imperial troops in Indochina and the Dutch East Indies pointed to chronic early failures of intelligence. General Douglas Gracey’s occupation force in southern Vietnam was poorly prepared for its designated role as occupier.16 Its counterpart in Java was no better off.17 Far from policing a routine transition to peace, the predominantly Indian units deployed in the East Indies were hard-pressed to contain Dutch–Indonesian violence. And the prominence of Indian soldiers in an imperial expeditionary force provoked fury among congressional leaders in Delhi as talks proceeded over Indian independence.18 The gravity of the local difficulties encountered by Britain’s occupation forces was one reason why, in 1945–1946, Britain’s Southeast Asia Command was so accommodating toward the reentry of French and Dutch military forces to combat mounting indigenous opposition.19 Whatever the initial underestimation of the problems involved, the presence of British forces in Indochina and the Dutch East Indies was a powerful incentive to improved intelligence gathering.20 This was particularly so in Java. Anxious to evacuate their units and assuage the mounting international criticism, Attlee’s government exploited the local observations of British commanders to push Dutch ministers and the Indonesian republican government toward compromise. British negotiators, first the former Moscow Ambassador, Lord Inverchapel, then the special commissioner for Southeast Asia, Lord Killearn, required improved intelligence to assist their brokerage of talks that culminated in the Linggadjati Agreement of November 15, 1946. In late 1946, the British were, it seems, quicker to realize than Hubertus Van Mook’s colonial administration the strength the republican hold over the Javanese interior.21 Better knowledge of local conditions did not, however, produce a fundamental shift in British policy. Throughout 1946 the Attlee government backed the restoration of French and Dutch imperial rule, even providing arms and shipping for the purpose. The instinct of Labour ministers and senior foreign policy advisers was to offer guarded support for French and, to a lesser extent, Dutch policy.22 However, disquiet on the Labour back-benches, and the complaints of newly independent Asian nations at this colonial complicity, had a cumulative effect, registering its greatest impact during highpoints of violence such as the Dutch “police actions” of 1947–1948 and the extension of military confrontations in northern Tonkin in 1948. The government and its foreign policy establishment were caught between an attachment to the regulated handover of colonial authority, the increasingly vocal protests of Asian client-states and sympathetic

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nationalist leaders, and shifting perceptions of the communist threat to Southeast Asia as a whole. As Lawrence makes clear, one means to allay doubts about the wisdom of Dutch and French policy in their Asian territories was to build stronger international support for greater Western involvement in Southeast Asia.23 Not surprisingly then, policy advisory committees with a finger on the pulse of incoming intelligence information from Southeast Asia advocated a stronger British, Commonwealth, and U.S. commitment to buttress the region against communist incursion. One such advisory body was the Permanent UnderSecretary’s Committee (PUSC), a grouping of senior Foreign Office officials established in February 1949 and chaired by Permanent Under-secretary Sir William Strang. The PUSC was designed to emulate George Kennan’s State Department Policy Planning Staff. The Committee’s American inspiration did not mean, however, that it adhered to U.S. policy slavishly. From its inception, the PUSC was animated by the strategic disparity between U.S. support for a functioning alliance system in Western Europe and Washington’s reluctance to become more deeply involved in the preservation of a non-communist Southeast Asia.24 The PUSC and the Singapore-based British Defense Coordination Committee (Far East) were foremost among the policy advisory groups that pushed Whitehall strategic planners to build bridges among the European imperial powers, independent India, and other existing Commonwealth states interested in preventing communist encroachment into Southeast Asia.25 The damaging consequences of disorder in Malaya on Britain’s ability to stem its trade imbalance with the dollar area, as well as the pressure of events in China, Indochina, and Indonesia, helps explain why these voices became much louder from 1948.26

Whitehall Reading of Decolonization in Asia The PUSC was but one of several advisory groups that placed decolonization in the context of Cold War strategy. Like other standing committees with an interest in Southeast Asia, it relied on a range of incoming political and military intelligence relayed from overseas posts up the Whitehall bureaucratic ladder through specialist ministry departments to executive level.27 British government policy therefore drew on several distinct sources of field intelligence about the situation in Indonesia and Indochina. Reports compiled in situ by consular staff, military observers, and liaison officers afforded the closest insight into local conditions. They were supplemented by periodic—usually fortnightly—political intelligence surveys that attempted to predict how events might unfold. Because crises of colonial rule were viewed as more than the

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product of purely internal factors, the Foreign Office Southeast Asia department acquired greater influence over policy advice than the regional specialists of the Colonial Office Eastern department, whose local expertise on Malaya or Burma seemed insufficient to meet the more global challenge of Cold War.28 Moreover, British consular staff in Batavia and Saigon were members of the diplomatic service responsible to the Foreign Office.29 The post of commissioner-general for Southeast Asia also assumed greater importance as regional instability intensified. The position was created in 1948 and first occupied by former dominions secretary, Malcolm MacDonald, who had by then served two years as governor-general, Southeast Asia. MacDonald’s staff in Singapore, like the consular personnel with whom they discussed the region’s problems, reported to the Foreign Office. Son of a prime minister, influential, and approachable, MacDonald had the ear of ministers, replacing the commander-in-chief of the then defunct South East Asia Command as the most influential in situ cabinet informant. His Singapore staff prepared political intelligence assessments covering Southeast Asia as a whole.30 As Tony Stockwell puts it, MacDonald was the broker among Whitehall departments, colonial governors, key allies, and local politicians. He enhanced this arbitrating role by swimming, if not with the nationalist tide, then at least not against it. But MacDonald was also staunchly anticommunist. He was decisive in persuading the British cabinet to agree a blanket ban on the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) on July 17, 1948, despite the lack of verifiable intelligence confirming MCP responsibility for the recent outbreak of rebellion.31 He could also be ruthless when necessary, insisting, for example, on the immediate replacement of Sir Edward Tenet, high commissioner of the Malaya federation, once the Malaya insurgency began.32 Yet MacDonald’s Singapore commission-general remained a progressive force, committed to the gradual transition to colonial self-government. Its chief was “anxious to avoid at all costs the charge of ‘ganging up’ with the Dutch and French against Asians.”33 MacDonald’s horizons also stretched much further than the Malaysian Peninsula. He submitted regular intelligence assessments to the Foreign and Colonial Offices that distilled information gathered from British diplomatic representatives and colonial officials throughout Southeast Asia, as well as evidence amassed through regional tours and discussions with client colonial governments.34 As the likelihood of a restoration of Dutch or French imperial authority diminished, so wider strategic appreciations figured more prominently in British policy planning. It was here that the apparatus of senior governmental advisory committees and regional commissions became more critical to the analysis of political and military intelligence. The pressing need to devise a viable strategy of regional defense as East-West rivalries sharpened in Southeast Asia

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meant that governmental agencies with little previous input to colonial policy formulation—such as the Joint Planning Staff (JPS)35 and the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC),36 the two main advisory committees to the chiefs of staff—contributed far more from 1947 onward. This should be set against the background of a wider postwar reorganization of the British intelligence community driven by the pressures of financial retrenchment, the advent of weapons of mass destruction, and the globalization of Cold War tensions.37 Although the effects of nationalist insurgency and communist penetration in Southeast Asia remained secondary to threat assessments about Soviet intentions in Europe, the international ramifications of colonial breakdown were at least identified as priority topics for intelligence studies.38 The civil-military bureaucracy of the service chiefs, the Cabinet Office secret information center,39 and the cabinet Malaya committee40 were, by 1950, central to Britain’s Southeast Asian policies, intruding into policy-planning areas previously dominated by the Colonial Office. United Nations interest in decolonization and Asian geopolitics added a further dimension to Whitehall policy planning. The UN was one forum where the attitudes of Britain’s allies, Commonwealth partners, and former colonies collided. Formulation of Southeast Asian policy therefore demanded consideration of UN reactions. And that required an additional corpus of intelligence gathering about colonial nationalist efforts to engage General Assembly attention, as well as the likely response of UN delegations, whether friendly or otherwise. Indonesia was under the UN spotlight from 1947 onward, Indochina less so, not least because France was better placed as a Security Council member to prevent formal consideration of the situation in Vietnam. The Netherlands government of Louis J. M. Beel, elected in May 1946, wielded less influence in New York, although Truman’s government remained indulgent toward Dutch military operations in Java. The Dutch authorities antagonized the British government far more than Washington by resorting to the first so-called “police action” in Indonesia in 1947 and frustrating the work of the UN Good Offices Mission deployed to monitor the subsequent cease-fire.41 Attlee’s government was also exasperated by the Dutch naval blockade of republican-held ports in Java, whose trade in foodstuffs—tea, sugar, and fats— was judged essential to Britain’s economy.42 As U.S. government opinion about colonial nationalism shifted toward containment and a more rigid anticommunism, so its attitude to UN consideration of colonial conflict became more complex. Meanwhile, France and the Netherlands, both more formally linked to Britain through the Brussels security treaty of 1948 and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance that followed it, remained bitterly opposed to UN intrusion in their colonial affairs. Instinctive British sympathy

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for this position was, however, complicated by the opposing views of other influential Commonwealth states, India and Australia foremost among them.43 Both sought to mobilize the UN General Assembly in opposition to French, and especially Dutch, colonial policy, a source of mounting embarrassment to the UK government.44

Supplementary Intelligence from the Dominions By 1947 the UN factor was a source of added influence for several of Britain’s closest friends, among them its two foremost Dominions: Canada and Australia. The British government swapped intelligence on Southeast Asia and long-term analysis of political trends in France with both of these countries. Regular intelligence exchanges among officials in London, Ottawa, and Canberra helped define what it meant to be a member of the Commonwealth “inner circle.”45 Nor did the persistent disagreements with Australia’s Labor government over what should be done in Indonesia and Indochina affect this intelligence liaison. The Dominions Office (given the more equitable title of Commonwealth Relations Office after World War II) and Britain’s high commissioners relayed selected Foreign Office and service ministry analysis of French and Dutch colonial policy to the Canadian and Australian governments. They responded in kind, exchanging incoming political intelligence via the Departments of External Affairs in both countries. The Joint Planning staffs in all three countries also maintained close working relationships, a reflection of longstanding ties, alliance commitments under the NATO pact, regional security cooperation in the Australia, New Zealand, and Malaya region (ANZAM), and common interest in the interaction of the Cold War and decolonization. For its part, the JIC and its Far East section included the Australian and Canadian chiefs of staff among its recipients of Southeast Asia intelligence assessments. While Australia’s regional purview encompassed Indochina, Indonesia, and Malaya, Canadian interest centered on Indochina, identified as a risk to Western security. Ottawa governments also enjoyed a warm relationship with France. Canada’s ambassador to Paris, George P. Vanier, was a much-respected Québecois general with numerous high-level contacts in the French government and military. More peripheral in European matters, the Australian legation in Paris (later upgraded to embassy status) under W.R. Hodgson reported extensively on French policy in Indochina. Legation reportage on the resumption of violence in Hanoi and Haiphong in November–December 1946, as well as the subsequent disintegration of the tripartite coalition in early 1947, was notable for its candor. Hodgson’s staff made no secret of the immense confusion among minis-

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ters, parliamentarians, and diplomatic observers over just what was taking place in Vietnam.46 Extensive political assessments of French and Dutch colonial policy responded to the demands of Ben Chifley’s Labor Party administration, in office until December 1949. Chifley’s government developed a strong regional interest in its “Near North“ periphery of Southeast Asia, and amassed as much independent information as possible about the region.47 While still drawing on British and U.S. government sources for political intelligence on Southeast Asia, Canberra built up its own information-gathering network of diplomats, special envoys, and military observers throughout the region. Australian appraisals of events in French Indochina and the Netherlands East Indies were uncolored by the European perspective of their British counterparts, and were often more sensitive to Asian nationalist sentiment. This more independent outlook soon registered in Australia’s outspoken opposition to the reimposition of colonial rule in Indonesia, which culminated in the Chifley government’s referral of the first Dutch “police action” in Java to the UN in July 1947.48 Australia’s commissioner for Malaya, C. Massey, worked alongside Malcolm MacDonald, and relayed information supplied by the UK Joint Intelligence Staff in Singapore as well as submitting regular reports of his own to Canberra on the regional scene based on incoming military intelligence.49 As in Paris and in Singapore, Australian political intelligence assessments were notable for their plain speaking. Massey admitted in an early survey of the situation in Tonkin on February 11, 1947 that most of the incoming intelligence received in Singapore focused on the French strategic position rather than the Vietnamese political situation, making long-term forecasting difficult.50 Two years later he returned to the same theme. Composite intelligence was one thing, but the lack of reliable information from the Viet Minh side was crippling. Massey noted on April 4, 1949 that, even after discussions in Singapore with French high commissioner Léon Pignon, numerous reports from the British military attaché in Saigon, and a debrief from the Far East Station intelligence staff, he could not draw a “satisfactory picture of the situation in Indochina,” but merely “a series of impressions which add somewhat to its understanding.”51 If anything, Australian representatives built up a clearer picture of events in Indonesia than in Indochina. Canberra appointees figured prominently on both the UN good offices committee and the cease-fire monitoring group that served in Indonesia in 1947–1948. Twice Australian delegations toured Southeast Asia to report on the prospects for regional stability, first under the aegis of William Macmahon Ball’s goodwill aid mission in the summer of 1948 (a trip that drew criticism from the Dutch and French governments),52 and second, in

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preparation for the launch of the Colombo Plan, the Commonwealth aid scheme for South and Southeast Asia launched in 1950.53 By the time Macmahon Ball arrived in Vietnam in June 1948, Canberra’s Department of External Affairs had opened a diplomatic back channel to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) government via Viet Minh representatives based in Bangkok.54 Although Australian embassy staff in Paris cultivated a close relationship with Charles Baudet, head of the Quai d’Orsay Southeast Asia division, it was the combination of an increased Australian diplomatic presence across Southeast Asia and the Chifley government’s known sympathy for a rapid transition to Asiatic self-rule that gave Canberra a distinct perspective on events—that of a geographical neighbor rather than a colonial power.55 Canberra’s forward thinking, often expressed in forthright terms by Foreign Minister Herbert V. Evatt, sometimes put it at loggerheads with London, both over Australia’s long-term strategic orientation between Britain and the United States and over the response to colonial conflict in Australia’s “northern tier.”56 British Foreign Office efforts to dampen Evatt’s critical attitude to colonial rule in Southeast Asia bore little fruit. In a New York Times article published on April 4, 1948, the Australian foreign minister reaffirmed his government’s belief that the problems of Indonesia and Indochina should be tackled in the same way, through the award of self-rule at the first opportunity.57 Australian diplomatic staff in Paris and Singapore concurred, rejecting military escalation as fruitless. Negotiations with Southeast Asian nationalists were imperative.58 The Canadian government was, by contrast, a more compliant partner, and a particularly astute observer of French policy. Again and again, Vanier’s ambassadorial reports offered unique insights into France’s intentions in Indochina. For instance, a month after Socialist premier Paul Ramadier’s eviction of the communist ministers from the government, on June 16, 1947, Vanier reported intelligence from Indochina that Paul Mus, director of the École d’OutreMer and one of high commissioner Emile Bolleart’s closest lieutenants, had held face-to-face talks with Ho. The story was not officially confirmed, but, as Vanier noted, its importance lay elsewhere. Rumors such as this, emanating from Bolleart’s administration, suggested a shift in high commission policy. Where once the “men on the spot,” typified by Bollaert’s predecessor, Thierry d’Argenlieu, had preached extension of operations in Tonkin and Annam, it now appeared that civil-military opinion was evenly divided over the merits of military escalation versus a resumption of peace talks.59 The Canadian embassy in Paris maintained its close watch on the development of France’s Indochina policy over the subsequent two years as the Bao Dai solution was first mooted, and then essayed with dismal results. In December 1948 and January 1949, for instance, Ambassador Vanier tracked the

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progress of Léon Pignon, newly appointed as high commissioner to Indochina. Pignon was then embarked on several weeks of shuttle diplomacy among the Paris government, Bao Dai’s entourage in Cannes, and General Xuan’s provisional government in Saigon, his objective being to persuade the ex-emperor to return to Vietnam in exchange for a new deal on Vietnamese autonomy and the development of a national army. Once again, the Canadian diplomatic team, much like the British, remained unimpressed by the French concessions on offer. In Vanier’s opinion, the war looked set to continue, regardless of whether Bao Dai resumed office: Scarcely a week goes by without reports being received of guerrilla attacks on convoys, trains being derailed or outlying settlements plundered. Unless circumstances change drastically, that is to say unless more French troops are sent to Indochina (and there are already 100,000 in the area), or unless Ho Chi Minh’s forces decide to return to their rice fields and live as peaceful citizens (neither of which possibility appears at the moment imminent), the sea-saw struggle can go on indefinitely. It is in fact becoming daily more evident that force alone cannot restore order in Indochina. The sooner a political solution is found the better for all concerned.60 The message transmitted to London from Ottawa was simple: Dialogue with the Viet Minh leadership was the only solution. By the time that President Vincent Auriol signed a fresh agreement with Bao Dai on March 8, 1949 over the eventual transition of the Vietnamese territories into a unified and autonomous associated state of the French Union, the Canadian government saw even less grounds for optimism. As Vanier reported, French forces controlled less than 10 percent of Vietnamese territory, and even Bao Dai’s ceremonial capital, Hué, was cut off from Tonkin to the north and Saigon to the south.61 The ambassador amplified his negative conclusions ten days later, this time by focusing on the worsening interparty divisions in France over Indochina policy. Parti Communiste Français (PCF) opposition to the war continued unabated. The Socialists were split between a conference commitment to early negotiations with the Viet Minh and a party leadership unwilling to break with its “Third Force” partners, the Christian Democrat Mouvement Républicaine Populaire (MRP), and the center-right Rassemblement des Gauches Républicaines (RGR), both of which endorsed Bao Dai’s position as legitimate ruler of Vietnam. And de Gaulle’s Rassemblement du Peuple Français (RPF) continued to snipe at Henri Queiulle’s governing coalition even though the Gaullist program for Indochina, delineated by General Catroux at the RPF congress in Lille a month earlier, hardly differed at all from

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the government’s declared policy. Most tellingly of all, Vanier’s contacts in the Ministry of Overseas France conceded that the Bao Dai solution was unlikely to work as the former emperor lacked the popular legitimacy necessary to draw support away from the Viet Minh. Moreover, it was quite inconceivable that a democratic referendum on the future of Vietnam could be held under French auspices when the military controlled so little territory.62 The Canadian ambassador’s emphatic conclusions acquire added significance when set against the more positive assessments of the British consul in Saigon, Frank Gibbs, who had remained convinced in 1948–1949 that the Bao Dai solution might work if only the French invested greater authority in their chosen Vietnamese figurehead.63 Even here, the irrepressible Gibbs saw signs of progress. Reviewing Bao Dai’s initial months in office in February 1950, Gibbs praised Pignon and Bao Dai’s combined efforts to build a viable coalition government. He blamed the lack of political progress in early 1950 on the fall of Queiulle’s government rather than on Bao Dai’s continuing inability to weaken popular support for the Viet Minh.64 It is impossible to say with confidence how far up the policymaking chain these opposing interpretations reached. Both were part of the background noise of incoming reportage and intelligence analysis that had to be sifted and refined into policy advice. One thing is clear. Whatever the differing viewpoints about the Bao Dai solution, by 1950 Britain’s information providers were convinced that, with greater Chinese support imminent, the Viet Minh leadership held the initiative.65 This was a conclusion that Britain’s senior intelligence advisory committee, the JIC, arrived at long before. And it is to this committee and other key security agencies that I now turn.

The Joint Intelligence Committee and the Men on the Spot: Advice as Influence The JIC held primary responsibility for the analysis of strategic intelligence within the Whitehall bureaucratic establishment after 1945. The committee was a hybrid. Although chaired by a Foreign Office official66 (in the critical years of 1947 to 1949, Sir William Haytor), its members were largely drawn from the security services and the armed forces. The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), responsible for foreign intelligence gathering, and its internal and imperial security counterpart, MI5, were each represented alongside the heads of service ministry intelligence departments. Both of these intelligence services maintained offices in Singapore that provided additional intelligence assessments for Southeast Asia. Reorganized under a new charter in February 1948, the JIC consistently extended its remit beyond questions of defense in-

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telligence and security to include consideration of British global interests.67 The admission of a Colonial Office representative in 1948 acknowledged the growing importance of intelligence about colonial insurgency. Furthermore, the JIC received incoming intelligence from subordinate joint intelligence committees in occupied Germany, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. It was the JIC Far East, based in Singapore, that compiled most Southeast Asian military intelligence assessments.68 Hence, the JIC Far East submitted reports to the JIC in London on the Dutch police actions in Indonesia, the progress of the conflict in Indochina, and the likelihood of deeper CCP involvement in Southeast Asian independence struggles.69 Beginning in late 1948, the JIC Far East and the Malayan Security Service (MSS) also briefed the JIC in London on the development of the Malayan Emergency and the ramifications of colonial violence in Indonesia and Indochina. The JIC Far East obtained its information from a range of sources. These included the overt, such as British military attachés and observers in the countries concerned, as well as the covert, such as material collected by MI6 and MI5 operatives in the field. In addition, the JIC Far East received economic and topographic intelligence from the staff of the Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB), an interservice agency that collated local information from diplomatic posts and SIS stations. A British JIB center in Singapore and its Australian equivalent in Melbourne were thus important links in the intelligence chain linking British stations in Southeast Asia with the JIC in London.70 In addition, MI5’s distinct Southeast Asian bureau, known as Security Intelligence Far East (SIFE), set up in late 1948, provided further information about internal subversion of British colonial control in Malaya and Singapore.71 The JIC Far East could call upon SIFE and its sister organization, MI6 Far East, “to fulfil local intelligence requirements” whenever information was required about a specific threat.72 With such a plethora of intelligence organizations, it was perhaps inevitable that the principal difficulty facing advisory bodies such as the JIC was to collate information quickly into intelligible threat assessments. Thanks to the institutional network of British information providers across Southeast Asia, neither the JIC in London nor Foreign Office analysts could be said to want for political or military intelligence. And that is to say nothing of the information divulged by French and Dutch colonial officials and military intelligence staffs to their British colleagues. Image intelligence, largely derived from aerial photography, was one area of weakness in an otherwise broad spectrum of intelligence sources.73 A snapshot of the situation in 1949 is revealing. The Foreign Office was by this point receiving fortnightly political summaries from its Saigon consulate.74 Reports from diplomatic staff in Batavia were less systematically filed, but were no less regular.75 Colonial Of-

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fice staff furnished weekly and monthly situation reports from Malaya, Ceylon, and Burma.76 The commission-general for Southeast Asia also provided monthly political summaries of regional developments. And as British counterinsurgency operations extended in Malaya, the Far East Land Forces command included wider appraisals of the Southeast Asian position in their regular pan-Malayan strategic review.77 At much the same time, the Colonial Office also reorganized its intelligence gathering practices to meet the perceived threat of communist subversion in British territories. In early 1948, Secretary of State for Colonies Arthur Creech Jones and his ministerial colleague, Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, both pushed colonial governments to take the communist threat more seriously. Creech Jones advised British colonial governors to refute hostile communist propaganda more vigorously in their public statements.78 And on March 30, Bevin initiated a fortnightly survey of communist activity in the colonies compiled by the Foreign Office Northern Department (which handled Soviet affairs), but based on colonial government intelligence.79 This compelled Colonial Office staff to revise their intelligence assessment procedures. The Colonial Office general department, hitherto responsible for collating security reports from colonial police forces, MI5, and MI6, gave way to the ministry’s geographical departments in the preparation of detailed intelligence appreciations compiled region by region. The general department retained its role as the agency that disseminated colonial security intelligence to the Foreign Office, the JIC, and the service ministries.80 The salient point to note here is that beginning in April 1948, the Colonial Office combined the political intelligence reports submitted by colonial governments relating to nationalist movements, industrial unrest, and the progress of local reform with the situation reports of colonial security services to produce more comprehensive threat assessments for use by other departments and the JIC. In the context of Southeast Asia, political intelligence surveys from the Malaya High Commission were henceforth evaluated alongside MI5’s monthly Far East intelligence summary, MI6 reports typically filed daily from its Asian stations, and the MSS monthly review.81 What then did JIC opinion represent? Was it indicative of something broader than the viewpoint of a single advisory body? The idea of an “official view” of Southeast Asian decolonization, of a single “official mind” representing Britain’s imperial interests, is too reductive to be of much analytical use here. It makes more sense to talk of a consensus among intelligence providers, government agencies, advisory committees, and cabinet ministers about the nature of the colonial disorder in Indochina and Indonesia, and the measures required to protect British overseas possessions against similar problems. Political intelligence supplied by British diplomatic, military, and

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colonial staff in Southeast Asia fostered general agreement in government about the disparities between the Indonesian situation and the Vietnamese. And this, in turn, helped clarify the singularities of Britain’s security dilemmas in the Malayan federation. Throughout the years 1946 to 1950, it was, for instance, widely acknowledged across Whitehall that the crisis facing the Dutch in the East Indies was less severe than France’s deepening involvement in colonial war in Indochina. Hardly remarkable, this conclusion nonetheless represented the distillation of key intelligence about various facets of the anticolonial rebellions in both territories. It is at this subsidiary level of intelligence processing that the more significant conclusions were drawn about the fundamental differences between the Indonesian and Vietnamese situations. For one thing, there was less uncertainty about the political complexion of the Indonesian nationalist movement. After all, the government of the Indonesian republic enjoyed some legitimacy, even “respectability,” in British eyes, something the DRV administration in Hanoi was never likely to achieve. The Foreign Office Southeast Asia department and senior cabinet figures accepted Dutch culpability for the breakdown in negotiations in 1946–1947. Yet the equally flagrant efforts of Admiral Thierry d’Argenlieu’s Saigon administration to undermine talks with the Viet Minh in 1946 elicited little high-level criticism.82 The Djokjakarta government’s vigorous suppression of the communist administration set up in Madiun in September 1948 added to pre-existing British optimism that a future Indonesian republic would cooperate with the Western powers.83 Other factors—military, political, and cultural—also shaped this more positive reading of the nationalist struggle in Indonesia. Armed conflict between the Dutch and Indonesians was punctuated by lulls in the fighting that went beyond the seasonal slowdowns in operations across northern Vietnam. The Javanese heartland manifestly sympathized with the republican government’s claims to political independence from Western imperialism and Eastern communism. And the multiplicity of island territories in the Indonesian archipelago, as yet little affected by the insurgency in Java and Sumatra, pushed Indonesian nationalists toward compromise with the colonial authorities, whereas the Viet Minh’s primary focus on a unitary Vietnam (much of which was already under de facto Viet Minh control), rather than the Indochina federation as a whole, did not. Major Dutch army operations in July 1947 and December 1948—or “police actions” as they were euphemistically termed—were of shorter duration and more limited in scope than their equivalents in Indochina. Conversely, they drew much broader international condemnation. Seen from the British perspective, this paradox was beneficial. The more episodic fighting in Java and

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Sumatra precipitated greater UN involvement in the final regulation of the conflict and stronger American pressure on the Dutch government to begin a negotiated withdrawal. After the stinging UN criticism of the first Dutch police action, cease-fire monitors appointed by the Security Council on August 25, 1947, from among Western consular staff in Batavia gained access to Dutch and republican-held areas. They painted a clearer picture of the local position on both sides of the political divide than could be obtained in Indochina. Seen from an intelligence perspective, the UN cease-fire commission provided verifiable information about conditions in republican territory, the offensive capacity of military forces on both sides, and the true extent of Dutch political control in and around the demarcation lines imposed by governor-general Van Mook at the end of August.84 The work of the cease-fire commission in late 1947 was but one indication of another important contrast between the problems of Indonesia and Indochina. Even though dialogue between the Dutch authorities and the republican government frequently broke down, the prospects for a negotiated end to imperial rule were always brighter than in Indochina. British policymakers found little source of comfort in Paris or Vietnam. Embassy personnel in the French capital, consular staff and military observers in Saigon, and the Foreign Office and the JIC in London, were often unsure whether the Viet Minh’s communist affiliation precluded a compromise peace or whether the breadth of French party political opposition to talks with the Viet Minh was the major barrier to a negotiated end to the war. Just as important, the military intelligence reaching London from Vietnam was punctuated by news of disheartening French reverses. By far the most influential British informant in the early years of the Indochina war was Lieutenant-Colonel A.G. Trevor-Wilson, military liaison officer in Saigon. Wilson submitted regular intelligence summaries to the War Office that were widely circulated between Whitehall departments. He enjoyed privileged access to French military commanders and often toured frontline units. His was the viewpoint of the seasoned Viet Minh watcher. It was Wilson who provided the South East Asia Command with the first, albeit approximate, calculation of the Viet Minh order of battle in and around Hanoi in December 1945.85 And as French losses mounted in 1947–1948, it was Wilson who gave a flavor of the frustrations felt within the expeditionary force high command over their shortages of manpower and key equipment.86 In a typical intelligence report submitted to London on February 24, 1948, Wilson mixed no-nonsense soldier’s talk with prescient analysis. French politicians talking up an imminent political solution were “ostriches . . . (with their) heads . . . as firmly buried in the sand as ever.” Meanwhile, resource-starved front-line units were compelled to take dangerous risks: “In any war, if a company is asked to take on a battalion

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task it will probably suffer heavy casualties without achieving its object, whereas a battalion might have succeeded with negligible losses.”87 The march of events soon caught up with Wilson’s warning. In April 1948, the Viet Minh attacked a military convoy on the road between Saigon and Dalat. Over 220 troops died, the largest single French loss since the war began. Once reports of this disaster reached London, the South East Department reassessed its political intelligence about the war from its sources inside Vietnam. It was not that British diplomatic staff or military observers such as Wilson were sending insufficient information—quite the contrary. Stung by the news of Viet Minh success, the Foreign Office acknowledged that its informants’ dire predictions had been correct: “As we see it from reports from you and (the) Military Attaché, the French are steadily losing grip and the prospects are alarming.” Exchanges with State Department Asianists revealed that they felt the same way. With a UN General Assembly session imminent, it was imperative that the British government was surefooted in its attitude to the Indochina war in case the Security Council faced pressure to consider it, just as it had been compelled to do with Indonesia a year previously.88 The Dutch political community reacted angrily to this UN criticism in 1947. But this opposition slowly crumbled over the course of 1948–1949.89 After what proved to be the final police action in December 1948, diehard support for further use of force to uphold imperial control ebbed away. Renewed criticism from the UN Security Council and, to a lesser extent, the U.S. threat to suspend Marshall Aid, added to the impetus for a negotiated settlement.90 The political trend was somewhat different in France. With the exception of Léon Blum’s all-Socialist transitional government in late 1946, between the passage of the new French constitution in October of that year and the general elections of June 1951, each successive coalition of the early Fourth Republic stood to the ideological right of its predecessor. The recovery of the right-wing vote and the strong showing of the Gaullist RPF in these elections, led to government by center-right coalitions for the remainder of the Indochina war.91 These points bear emphasis since the formative years of the Fourth Republic are most readily associated with the center-left tripartite coalition of the Socialists, MRP, and PCF. Escalation of the Indochina war in early 1947 was central to the acrimonious dissolution of this coalition.92 But, as Ambassador Vanier alone discerned, the key shift occurred a year later, in August 1948, when André Marie’s government, one of a string of “Third Force” coalitions dominated by the MRP and the Radical Party grouping, the Rassemblement des Gauches Républicaines (RGR), appointed Paul Reynaud, a leading figure of the prewar right, as finance minister.93

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The conflict in the Vietnamese territories also played an important role in France’s steady drift rightward over the subsequent course of the war. Unbending resolve to tackle the Viet Minh became pivotal to the MRP, the dominant party in the Third Force coalition. MRP leaders feared a disastrous hemorrhage of support to the Gaullists if they bowed to Socialist and PCF demands for negotiation with Ho Chi Minh.94 The declining influence of the French left in colonial and defense policy was critical to the disastrous French policy choices in Indochina, resulting in adherence to the Bao Dai solution, refusal to pursue direct negotiation with the Viet Minh leadership, and greater attachment to U.S. Cold War imperatives as American military aid became fundamental to the continuation of the French war effort from 1950 on. It might be thought that a Labour government in Britain would have disapproved of the predominance of right-wing, or more specifically, MRP thinking in France’s Indochina policy. But this would be to misread both British analysis of the French party political scene and the depth of anticommunism in Whitehall. It is in this context that the similarities, as well as the differences, between the Indonesian and Vietnamese situations shaped British analysis of Southeast Asian events. As we have seen, the Attlee government did not condemn French prosecution of the Indochina war, and it showed some fellow feeling toward the Dutch as the chorus of UN opposition to imperialist repression intensified. But intelligence appreciations of French and Dutch political and military policy were far from uncritical. In both cases, fears were expressed that ostensibly successful military advances were counterproductive. The JIC Far East estimated that the first Dutch police action in July 1947 would increase popular support for the republican government and stir pan-Asian unity against European imperialism.95 The same committee warned two years later that the consolidation of French defenses in and around Hanoi and Haiphong increased the probability of a shift in Viet Minh operations toward more northerly areas where liaison with Chinese forces raised more serious dangers.96 The large numbers of civilian deaths and wholesale destruction of farmland, livestock, and private property that were so common a feature of colonial warfare suggested that the political alienation of rural populations from Western rule would only increase over time. Even when formerly nationalist-held areas were reoccupied, it was clear that insurgent forces retained their grip on local populations, particularly in remote areas far from major lines of communication.97 Attempts to recruit larger numbers of indigenous auxiliaries as soldiers and policemen to fight against insurgent forces were generally reckoned no substitute for the primary role of Dutch or French forces. Furthermore, in the context of Indochina, British intelligence analysts began expressing fears in 1949 that, were larger numbers

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of Vietnamese to rally to a joint war effort championed by Bao Dai, the Viet Minh leadership would probably turn to the CCP for greater assistance. If Mao acceded to this request, a “full-scale offensive” in Tonkin was to be expected.98 The commitment of so many professional troops, officers especially, in protracted colonial campaigning drained the capacity of France and the Netherlands to meet their obligations to Western European defense. Public support in the Netherlands and France for colonial war in Southeast Asia was bound to erode as losses and costs mounted. And the sense of embattlement and isolation among those political and military leaders most committed to the fight could easily translate into a refusal to listen to more moderate counsel. Perhaps the most striking feature of this list of factors is its applicability to the Malayan situation. It is hard to resist the conclusion that the nuances in the British reading of intelligence on Indonesia and Indochina reflected a tacit understanding that similar difficulties might lie just around the corner in the Malayan federation. Here we return to the importance of “forward thinking” in colonial policy to the British government’s processing of decolonization. Faced with numerous intelligence warnings that offered clear parallels with Malaya, ministers nonetheless remained confident that they could avert Dutchstyle colonial humiliation or the quagmire of a colonial war akin to Indochina. At root, this stemmed from the belief (misguided perhaps, but certainly genuine) that Parliament, domestic public opinion, and Commonwealth governments recognized Britain’s genuine commitment to Malayan self-rule.99

Lessons Learned? Fighting Communism in Malaya Did the Attlee government understand Asian decolonization any better than its European imperial partners? Before considering whether any lessons had been learned from recent Dutch and French experiences of conflict in Southeast Asia, a short digression into the historiography of British counterinsurgency in Malaya is required to place any such lessons in context. Historians of the Emergency’s origins generally acknowledge the significance of key changes in British constitutional proposals for the future of the Malayan federation.100 During Japan’s occupation of Malaya, Colonial Office planners devised the Malayan Union scheme as the basis for a multiracial society in liberated Malaya in which the Chinese and Indian minorities would acquire equal rights to the Malay majority. Malay pressure for the abandonment of this scheme drove the British to the alternative Federation of Malaya in which Malay representatives held pride of place.101 Support among the Chinese community for the communist rebellion was rooted in British acquiescence to Malay determination to safeguard their communal dominance.

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The obvious point of note here is that the complexion of British administration in Malaya altered in response to conflicting local demands and the overarching requirements of regional strategy, economic interest, and Cold War planning. As Anthony Stockwell has shown, underlying continuities in British colonial policy in Malaya persisted throughout the Emergency years of 1948 to 1957.102 While the British were committed by 1948 to long-term collaboration with the Malay majority, they maintained their efforts to draw the Chinese and Indian communities into an eventual devolved system of government. Initially, this policy failed. The ensuing violence indicated that the federation scheme would not go unopposed. In Karl Hack’s understated turn of phrase, “The British long-term plan, perhaps best styled ‘unite and quit’ rather than ‘divide and rule,’ had got off to an indifferent start.”103 Yet parallels with the contemporaneous Bao Dai experiment in Indochina are more apparent than real. Whereas power sharing with a stable, socially conservative Malay community was tenable, a genuine partnership between the French government and non-communist Vietnamese proved elusive. Communalism in Indochina was different: Unlike Malaya, communist insurgency in Indochina originated in the largest ethnic group. The vicissitudes of high policy are one thing, but sharper differences of interpretation have arisen over the alleged success of British counterinsurgency policy.104 Historians of the first phase of the Emergency have long disputed the achievements of General Sir Gerald Templer’s term as high commissioner in Malaya between February 1952 and May 1954. Most insist that his administration broke the stalemate in British efforts to quash the rebellion by implementing a systematic hearts-and-minds strategy and reinvigorating a local intelligence service. Taken together, these measures complemented—indeed, superseded—a more vigorous military campaign against the communist insurgents and their principal backers among Malaya’s Chinese community. Historian Karl Hack rejects this view, contending instead that a more effective counterinsurgency antedated Templer’s arrival, its framework having been put in place under the security scheme—the Briggs Plan—devised by the director of military operations, Lieutenant-General Sir Harold Briggs in 1950–1951.105 According to Hack, the Briggs Plan was set to yield results by the time Templer’s predecessor, Sir Henry Gurney, was assassinated in October 1951. And the essence of its success was less hearts and minds than tighter control of Malaya’s population through policing and, above all, the forced resettlement of Chinese squatter communities living at the margins of Malayan jungle areas previously beyond effective government control. Vital reforms to policing and intelligence gathering were also initiated in the pre-Templer years.106 More recently, Kumar Ramakrishna and Simon C. Smith have reiterated the importance of the Templer era, insisting that the restoration of popular confi-

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dence in British authority—the key objective of the hearts-and-minds policy— was indeed critical to British success. Where Hack privileges population control, these authors point to improvements in the quality of life among the resettled Chinese, high commission propaganda, psychological warfare, and the systematic rewarding of those willing to provide information about the MCP or its guerrilla force, the Malayan Races Liberation Army (MRLA), in turning the tide Britain’s way.107 Food provision, improved economic security, and the assurance of government protection to isolated communities helped restore rural confidence in the central government, undermining MCP ability to secure support, whether through ideological appeals or coercion.108 One thing that unites these differing approaches is the central importance of effective rural governance and improved intelligence gathering to the containment of rebellion. As we have seen, the British government had a wide range of intelligence providers on Southeast Asia. But this was no guarantee that British policymakers would retain the initiative. Perhaps the most striking example of this was the failure of the Malayan Security Service to predict the imminent escalation of communist-orchestrated violence in the Malaya Federation. Once the Malayan Emergency began in June 1948, official recriminations over the local intelligence failure triggered a fundamental reorganization of policing, security policy, and intelligence provision in Malaya.109 The revelation of how little the MSS knew about communist infiltration in Malaya also prompted a wider review of security policing throughout the British Empire.110 The quality of intelligence assessment in Malaya undoubtedly improved over time, assisted by the huge expansion in police numbers and the emergence of a more efficient Special Branch dedicated to swift exploitation of information about MCP and MRLA activities.111 Greater Special Branch success pointed to another factor. Effective local intelligence gathering demanded that British security forces come to terms with the ethnic, political, and religious divisions among Malaya’s 2.6 million Chinese, 2.2 million Malays, and 600,000 Indians. British officials were well aware that support for the rebellion was strongest among Malaya’s Chinese community.112 They had less idea of how this situation could be reversed. In an August 1948 letter to senior Malaya federation officials, Sir Thomas Lloyd, permanent under-secretary at the Colonial Office, got to the heart of the problem: It seems particularly difficult, at least for us here in London, to know what the ordinary Chinese man or woman is thinking. The explanation may be that there is a gap in our knowledge in London. But there are some indications that the Malayan Administrations themselves may be less closely in touch with Chinese opin-

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ion than they are with Malay. Fewer officers in the Malayan Civil Service speak Chinese than Malay, and in spite of the various official reports which we get, covering Chinese affairs, we seem to have a far less clear impression of what the Chinese want than what the Malays want. This was certainly the case, for example, at the time of discussions leading up to the establishment of the (Malayan) Federation. (We are, of course, thinking here not of intelligence in the police sense,—not of information about criminals and subversive movements—but of a general picture of what the ordinary law-abiding person in the different communities is thinking and feeling, and what are the motives for his actions, and what is likely to arouse his interest and enthusiasm.)113 It seems then that before the British could apply any lessons learned from recent Dutch and French experience in Southeast Asia, they had first to come to grips with the communal basis of the disorders they faced in Malaya. Even so, certain underlying assumptions about the future of empire, the nature of the communist threat, and the best means to counteract it determined the way in which intelligence providers placed the Malayan Emergency in the wider context of recent colonial disorders. British diplomatic staff across Southeast Asia stressed three factors above all in their comments on Indonesia’s fight for independence and the Indochina war. First was the widespread belief that misguided colonial policies were to blame for nationalist recourse to violence. Second was a clear rejection of the Cold War view that communist groups were all to be equally condemned. Third was the belief that ideology was secondary to the fundamental issue of national self-determination.114 Political intelligence such as this was, however, at variance with the policy options then being considered in London and Singapore. Over the summer of 1948, the Foreign Office debated the possibility of extending the Brussels Treaty arrangements to Southeast Asia, tying Britain, France, and the Netherlands into a common regional security framework. The idea was picked up by the PUSC, which paralleled the advice of commissioner-general Malcolm MacDonald. MacDonald increasingly viewed communist influence among Southeast Asian states in terms of a domino theory, in which the fate of Indochina was critical to the fate of its near neighbors.115 Ironically, it was political intelligence from the Singapore commission-general that proved decisive in killing off the idea, which, it must be said, stirred mixed emotions across Whitehall. As MacDonald acknowledged, Britain had to walk a political tightrope between strengthening Western resistance to communism and antagonizing Asian partners by resorting to what would appear to

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be a colonial alliance.116 Esler Dening, MacDonald’s chief correspondent in the Foreign Office Southeast Asia department, went further: If we assume, as I think we may, that the Russians are out to rouse Asiatic opinion against the Western democracies, then it seems to me that all of us must be very careful not to offer them a weapon by entering into any kind of open agreement to collaborate on colonial matters in South East Asia. As we see it, our particular difficulty is that Communism in South East Asia shelters itself behind the perfectly genuinely nationalist movements, which, for our part, we are fostering towards self-government. In attacking the Communists, there is a very real danger that we may either attack, or appear to be attacking, the nationalists. Whereas in Malaya and Burma you may consider that the problem has been simplified by the fact that the Communists have resorted to open violence, the position is not so clear-cut elsewhere.117 The message that anticolonial nationalism and communism should not be conflated had clearly got through. Even the Foreign Office’s anticommunist propaganda section, the Information Research Department (IRD), initially accepted this principle in Malaya, despite its inclination to condemn colonial nationalists wherever possible as communist stooges.118 As the Chinese Communists edged closer to victory in 1949, the Malayan high commission strove harder to drive a wedge between the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) and their Chinese comrades.119 In doing so, Gurney’s staff dismissed the idea that the MCP was in any way subservient to either the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or the Soviet government. During the summer of 1949, CCP radio broadcasts promised moral support and material assistance to the communist struggle in Malaya.120 Yet there was, as yet, little concrete intelligence linking the MCP insurgency to external communist support, and certainly nothing as clear-cut as Chinese backing for Maeso’s short-lived attempt to establish a government in eastern Java under the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). An essential aim of high-commission propaganda was to convince Malaya’s Chinese community that the CCP did not serve their interests against colonial oppression or discrimination by indigenous Malays.121 Refusing to admit shared MCP and CCP objectives was part of a broader public relations strategy in which British officials tried to square two particularly difficult circles. These were to convince Malaya’s Chinese population that they were Malayan first and Chinese second, and to make plain that the MCP could never be the authentic voice of Malayan nationalism. This was one area in which French

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policy in Vietnam was judged a failure, the Viet Minh having convincingly demonstrated that it served the Vietnamese national cause better than the French-backed regime in Saigon. Yet British officials were hardly comparing like with like. In April 1949, the JIC advised the chiefs of staff that the MCP could field a maximum of four thousand poorly armed guerrillas in the MRLA. Of these, only a minority were “indoctrinated armed communists.” The remainder were described as “part-time followers, whose strength varies from month to month according to M.C.P. policy and the general situation.”122 In the following year, the cabinet Malaya committee supported the adoption of the Briggs Plan of Chinese squatter resettlement precisely because Malayan counterinsurgency was not a matter of fighting a regular military force but a small terrorist organization reliant on rural communities for concealment and supply.123 Simply put, the MRLA was a mere shadow of the Viet Minh. In September 1950, the British and French foreign ministers met with U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson in New York to agree on strategic priorities in Southeast Asia. The Foreign Office chiefs of staff reacted favorably to the prospect of increased U.S. material aid for the French war effort, and were gratified by American willingness to help fund implementation of the Briggs Plan in Malaya.124 But there was little change in underlying British pessimism about the Indochina situation. Within eight weeks of this meeting, in November 1950 service chiefs consulted the Singapore commission-general for Southeast Asia as well as British land force commanders in the region about the advisability of additional Anglo–American military supplies for Thailand and Burma in the event of a French collapse in Vietnam. The Burmese were unlikely to accept such Western interference, and the Thais were expected to insist on firmer Anglo–American guarantees of support. It was imperative that the French held on. But this now lay in American hands. In the eyes of Britain’s civil-military observers, a communist takeover in Indochina seemed imminent, unless the quantity of U.S. military aid to French forces increased markedly.125 The JIC concurred. In November 1950 it, too, reported on probable developments in Indochina. The conclusions reached made worrying reading for the cabinet. French forces could not regain the initiative in northern Tonkin, and lacked “the will to win.” Viet Minh forces were, by comparison, formidable. Chinese military instructors, armaments, and communications equipment would enable the Viet Minh to take the offensive without the direct intervention of Chinese troops. The mobile striking force of Viet Minh Chu Lac battalions portended larger, more sustained attacks on French redoubts in the Hanoi region. Most important, the French were “almost universally unpopular” among the Vietnamese. The autonomy promised at the Pau

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Conference earlier in the year fell short of the commitment to full independence needed to convince Vietnam’s population that there was a better alternative to the Viet Minh government.126 The importance of population control in containing rebellion was perhaps the principal lesson of the Dutch crisis in Indonesia and the Indochina war for Britain’s policymakers in Malaya. That is by no means to suggest that analysis of Dutch problems in Java or the French war effort in Vietnam determined Britain’s strategy in Malaya. Rather, it is to point out three lesser conclusions. One is that British analysis of local conditions in Java, Sumatra, and Tonkin dwelt on Dutch and French inability to regain material control over huge swaths of countryside. The second point is related to the first. The effectiveness of republican government in Java and the Viet Minh’s tightening grip over the Vietnamese peasantry pointed to a single conclusion. It was near impossible to recover the strategic initiative once the writ of colonial government was excluded from large tracts of territory with high population density. The third conclusion to emerge from British familiarity with recent events in Indonesia and Indochina was implicit in the operating assumptions of the Malayan high commission under Gurney and Templer. From 1948 onward, a first principle of high commission strategy was that control over the civilian population in the Malayan countryside was pivotal to success. Had the alienation of the Chinese immigrant community been allowed to continue, the MCP and the MRLA might have gone further in their original emulation of Maoist strategy, driving the colonial authorities out of remote areas and consolidating the communist grip on the countryside, much as the Viet Minh did with much greater success in northern Indochina.127

Conclusion The volume of information available to Whitehall’s strategic planners about developments in Southeast Asia in the late 1940s begs a number of questions. How effective was the collation and dissemination of intelligence among senior departmental analysts, government advisory committees, and ministers? How far did the nature of this incoming intelligence shape the British governmental debate over Southeast Asian decolonization? Was there any “official view” of what was perceived to be taking place? And what lessons learned from the French and Dutch experiences were applied to Malaya? This paper has tried to provide some possible answers. As we have seen, the British government never wanted for political intelligence from French- and Dutch-held areas of Indonesia and Indochina. The problem was always to evaluate its accuracy when relatively little reliable in-

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formation was obtainable from republican-held areas of Java and Sumatra and, above all, from the vast areas of Vietnam beyond French control. In a November 1948 letter to a colleague in the Foreign Office Southeast Asia department, the British consul in Saigon admitted as much: Distracted by the antics of General Xuan and his Government, and by the pomp and circumstances of the High Commissioner’s comings and goings, one tends sometimes in Saigon to put out of mind the fact that the greater part of Indochina is still controlled by the Viet Minh. This unbalance is aggravated by our lack of contact with the rebels, and the poverty of our sources of information about them.128 British analysts struggled to overcome the inevitable bias inherent in intelligence amassed within Dutch- or French-held areas or as a result of dialogue with the local colonial administrations. Over time, greater efforts were made to acquire information from within nationalist-controlled territory, but this material, such as it was, remained a small fraction of the overall volume of information processed. By 1946 the intelligence gathered about the Dutch East Indies and French Indochina was widely shared among relevant government agencies and colonial administrations. But only with the proliferation of high-level advisory committees as Cold War tensions in Europe and Asia increased in 1947–1948 did the previous background noise of intelligence reportage resolve itself into more coherent, understandable patterns. Agencies such as the JIC and its subordinate committees in Asia were required to distill political and strategic information into long-term policy advice. Their remit soon extended to colonial issues. What resulted was less an official view of the course of decolonization than a better-informed debate in government as political intelligence weighed more heavily in policy options. This is not to suggest that British officialdom, often smug in its appreciation of the problems of imperialist partners, generally got things right.129 Shock over the outbreak of disorder in Malaya in June 1948 suggested otherwise.130 In relative terms, however, the British got off lightly. By the end of 1950, their analysis of strategic positions in Southeast Asia confirmed the severity of France’s problems in Indochina as compared to Britain’s effort to restore control in Malaya. The dominant historical interpretation of British “success” in Malayan counterinsurgency has it that only after the killing of High Commissioner Gurney in October 1951—an event almost coincidental with the end of General de Lattre de Tassigny’s short-lived revitalization of French military fortunes in Tonkin—did a strong disjuncture appear between British advances in Malaya and French setbacks in Vietnam. It nonetheless seems fair to conclude

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that British policymakers drew valuable lessons from the security dilemmas that confronted the French and Dutch colonial governments long before Gurney fell to the assassin’s bullet. This was not a straightforward matter of analogies applied wholesale to British territory. The archival record reveals few instances in which intelligence reports led officials or ministers to conclude that events in the Dutch East Indies or Indochina indicated that things should be done this way or that in nearby Malaya. Intelligence assessment was too variable—the product of numerous sources, some of which contradicted one another—to make such reductive analysis possible. And policymaking was too complex and serious a business to be reduced to monocausal explanation. Thus, the impact of the crises of Dutch and French colonialism on British policy in Southeast Asia has to be evaluated differently, as a subtle, incremental process in which intelligence analysis generally reinforced policymakers’ underlying assumptions rather than producing fundamental shifts in outlook. When Labour ministers, senior Foreign and Colonial Office officials, Malcolm MacDonald’s Singapore commission, and the high commission in Malaya discussed the strength of Asian nationalism, the depth of popular anticolonialism, counterinsurgency techniques, and the complications caused by the internationalization of colonial problems, their views were, to some degree, colored by recent Dutch and French experience. And it is here that the information providers played a key role. The Dutch police actions provided clear warnings about the dangers of unilateral action taken in defiance of the UN and contrary to prevailing international opinion. The gulf between official claims about the extent of colonial control and the reality of large areas of territory in nationalist hands confirmed the importance of effective rural administration and tighter regulation of population movement. The trend toward military escalation in Java and Tonkin sounded alarm bells about the commitment of large conventional forces to counterinsurgency operations. The use of paramilitary police and small, specialist military units were to be preferred. And the consolidation of communist power in China produced near feverish intelligence gathering about connections between colonial nationalists and external communist backers that would intensify after 1950. Intelligence appraisals were integral to this learning process, helping to persuade decision makers in London, Singapore, and Kuala Lumpur that counterinsurgency aimed at population control rather than military confrontation was the key to success.

Notes 1. Regarding the “information order” in nineteenth-century India, see C.A. Bayly’s indispensable book on the subject, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering

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and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 2. A point made in the context of South East Asia by Karl Hack, “South East Asia and British strategy, 1944–51,” in Richard J. Aldrich, ed., British Intelligence, Strategy and the Cold War, 1945–51 (London: Routledge, 1992), 321–22. 3. Outstanding surveys that explore this shift in expectations include John Darwin, Britain and Decolonization: The Retreat from Empire in the Post-War World (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988); R.J. Butler, Britain and Empire: Adjusting to a PostImperial World (London: I.B. Tauris, 2002), 63–96, passim; Prosser Gifford and William Roger Louis, The Transfer of Power in Africa; Wm. Roger Louis, “The Dissolution of the British Empire,” in The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 4: Judith M. Brown and Wm. Roger Louis, eds., The Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 329–56. For Colonial Office policy in South East Asia, see Simon C. Smith, Britain’s Relations with the Malay Rulers from Decentralization to Malayan Independence, 1930–1957 (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1995); A.J. Stockwell, “British Imperial Policy and Decolonization in Malaya, 1942–52,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 13, no. 1 (1984), 68–87. For subSaharan Africa, see J. Flint, “Planned Decolonization and its Failure in British Africa,” African Affairs 82 (1983), 389–411, and Ronald Hyam, “Africa and the Labour Government, 1945–51,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 16, no. 3 (1988). For Labour policy in the Middle East, see Wm. Roger Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945–1951: Arab Nationalism, the United States, and Postwar Imperialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984); Nicholas Owen, “Britain and Decolonization: The Labour Governments and the Middle East, 1945–51,” in Michael J. Cohen and Martin Kolinsky, eds., Demise of the British Empire in the Middle East: Britain’s Responses to Nationalist Movements, 1943–55 (London: Frank Cass, 1998), 3–22. For the continuation of self-government thinking under the Conservatives, see David Goldsworthy, “Keeping Change within Bounds: Aspects of Colonial Policy during the Churchill and Eden Governments, 1951–57,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 18, no. 1 (1990), 81–108. 4. J. M. Lee, “‘Forward Thinking’ and War: The Colonial Office during the 1940s,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 6, no. 1 (1977), 76–78. 5. For a useful introduction to these questions, see A. I. Singh, “Imperial Defense and the Transfer of Power in India,” International History Review 4, no. 4 (1982), 568–88; Hugh Tinker, “The Contraction of Empire in Asia: The Military Dimension,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 16, no. 2 (1988), 218–33; Richard J. Aldrich, “British Strategy and the End of Empire: South Asia, 1945–51,” in Aldrich, ed., British Intelligence, 275–307; David Devereux, “Britain, the Commonwealth and the Defense of the Middle East, 1948–56,” Journal of Contemporary History 24 (1989), 327–45; John Kent, British Imperial Strategy and the Origins of the Cold War, 1944–49 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1993). 6. See, for example, The National Archives (hereafter TNA), London, Joint Intelligence Committee files, CAB 158/1, JIC reports, JIC(47)2(0)FINAL, “India—Organization for Intelligence,” January 4, 1947; JIC(47)3(0)FINAL, “Scheme for Provincial Autonomy and Ultimate Partition of Palestine,” January 7, 1947; JIC(47)60, “Threat of Arab Intervention in Palestine,” October 18, 1947. 7. National Archives of Australia (hereafter NAA), CRS, series A1838/278, item

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463/6/3, copy of Lord Killearn (Singapore) memorandum to Attlee, “Soviet Activities in South East Asia,” December 18, 1946. 8. TNA, CAB 158/6, JIC(49)33, JIC report, “Communist Influence in the Far East,” April 29, 1949. 9. Stockwell, “British Imperial Policy and Decolonization in Malaya,” 78. 10. “The Situation in Malaya,” Cabinet memorandum by Secretary of State for Colonies Arthur Creech Jones, July 1, 1948, doc. 153, British Documents on the End of Empire (hereafter BDEEP), general editor, S.R. Ashton, series B, vol. 3: A.J. Stockwell, ed., Malaya, Part II: The Communist Insurrection 1948–1953 (hereafter Malaya II) (London: HMSO, 1995); Gerold Krozewski, “Finance and Empire: The Dilemma Facing Great Britain in the 1950s,” International History Review, 18, no. 1 (1996), 48–69; Nicholas J. White, “Capitalism and Counter-insurgency? Business and Government in the Malayan Emergency, 1948–57,” Modern Asian Studies 32, no. 1 (1998), 149–77. 11. TNA, CAB 158/1, JIC(47)12, JIC report, “Role of the Colonies in War,” April 6, 1947; Hack, “South East Asia and British Strategy,” 309, 324–25. 12. TNA, CAB 158/7, JIC(49)44, JIC report, “Situation in South China,” May 11, 1949; JIC(49)5 to JIC(49) 13, Reviews of the threat to Hong Kong, July to November 1949; Wm. Roger Louis, “Hong Kong: The Critical Phase, 1945–1949,” American Historical Review, 102 (October 1997), 1072–82. 13. TNA, Colonial Office confidential original correspondence, CO 537/5658: Resistance to Communism in South East Asia, tel. 847, Sterndale-Bennett, Commission General for the United Kingdom in South East Asia, to FO South East Asian Department. 14. Anita Inder Singh, The Limits of British Influence: South Asia and the Anglo– American Relationship, 1947–56 (London: Pinter, 1993), chapter 2; and Singh, “Keeping India in the Commonwealth: British Political and Military Aims, 1947–49,” Journal of Contemporary History 20, no. 3 (1985), 469–81; “Post-Imperial Attitudes to India: The Military Aspect, 1947–51,” Round Table 295 (1985), 360–75. 15. Mark A. Lawrence, “Transnational coalition-building and the making of the Cold War in Indochina, 1947–49,” Diplomatic History 26, no. 3 (2002), 455–60; and his excellent Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 105–7. 16. Lawrence, Assuming the Burden, 110–18; Timothy O. Smith, Britain and the Origins of the Vietnam War, 1943–1950: UK Policy in Indochina, 1943–1950 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007), chapters 2 and 3. 17. Peter M. Dunn, The First Vietnam War (London: Hurst, 1985), especially chapters 6 to 8; Peter Dennis, Troubled Days of Peace: Mountbatten and South East Asia Command, 1945–46 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987), 67–111, passim. 18. Robert J. MacMahon, Colonialism and Cold War: The United States and the Struggle for Indonesian Independence, 1945–49 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), 124–25. 19. The best account of SEAC’s role is Dennis, Troubled Days of Peace. For accounts of the occupation in individual countries, see Dunn, The First Vietnam War; MacMahon, Colonialism and Cold War, chapters 3 and 4; Albert E. Kersten, “International Intervention in the Decolonization of Indonesia, 1945–1962,” in CharlesRobert Ageron and Marc Michel, eds., L’ère des décolonisations (Paris: Karthala, 1995), 269–73.

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20. See, for example, NAA, CRS, A1838/283, item 463/6/2/1, Office of the Special Commissioner in South East Asia, APLO memorandum no. 18, “Situation in Cambodia,” October 20, 1946. 21. MacMahon, Colonialism and Cold War, 119–36. 22. See, for instance, Documents Diplomatiques Français 1946, vol. 2 (Berne: P.I.E. Peter Lang, 2004), doc. 261, Ambassador René Massigli (London) to Georges Bidault, November 23, 1946. Massigli pointed out that, in 1946, the Attlee government was generally more sympathetic to French policy in Vietnam than to Dutch policy in Indonesia. 23. Lawrence, “Transnational Coalition-Building,” 453–80; Mark Atwood Lawrence, “Forging the ‘Great Combination’: Britain and the Indochina Problem, 1945–1950,” in Mark Atwood Lawrence and Fredrik Logevall, eds., The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 120–25. 24. Richard J. Aldrich, “Secret Intelligence for a Post-War World: Reshaping the British Intelligence Community, 1944–51,” in Aldrich, ed., British Intelligence, 22–23. 25. Ritchie Ovendale, “Britain, the United States, and the Cold War in South-East Asia, 1949–1950,” International Affairs 63 (1982), 447–64; Hack, “South East Asia and British Strategy,” 325–26. 26. An argument developed by Andrew J. Rotter, “The Triangular Route to Vietnam: The United States, Great Britain, and Southeast Asia, 1945–1950,” International History Review 6, no. 3 (1984), 404–23. 27. TNA, CAB 158/7, JIC(49)59/Annex I: JIC report, “Intelligence Organization in the Far East,” 1949. 28. The prestige of the Colonial Office Eastern department, and the Malaya civil service officials that reported to it, suffered owing to the failure of either to accurately predict the outbreak of communist insurgency in the Malaya federation. See BDEEP: Malaya, vol. 2, doc. 139, note by W. Linehan on the Malay dimension, March 2, 1948; doc. 146, CO minutes on internal security, May 28–31, 1948. 29. For an interesting survey of Foreign Office attitudes during the early stages of the Indochina war, informed by Saigon consular reports, see Martin Shipway, “British Perceptions of French Policy in Indochina from the March 1946 Accords to the Inception of the Bao Dai Regime, 1946–1949: A Meeting of ‘Official Minds’?” in Ageron and Michel, eds., L’ère des décolonisations, 83–96. 30. TNA, CAB 158/7, JIC(49)59/Annex I: JIC report, “Intelligence organization in the Far East,” 1949. 31. BDEEP: Malaya, vol. 2, doc. 160, Cabinet conclusions, July 19, 1948. 32. BDEEP: Malaya, vol. 2, docs. 152 and 154, Creech Jones–MacDonald correspondence, June 30 and July 2, 1948. 33. Stockwell, “British Imperial Policy,” 74–76, quote at 76. 34. See, for example, MacDonald’s correspondence on Anglo-Dutch collaboration in South East Asia in 1948, in TNA, CO 537/3550. 35. The Joint Planning Staff (JPS) provided specialist reports and strategic projections to the chiefs of staff. Joint planners’ opinions thus fed into the policy advice of the chiefs of staff committee, which reported to Cabinet. 36. The Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) was reorganized in 1947–1948 to meet the need for a wider range of long-term intelligence assessments to assist Cold War

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planning. The committee held the same rank as the joint planning staff but lacked support by its secretariat. Made up of representatives from the Ministry of Defense, Foreign Office, and Secret Intelligence Service, the JIC was a sub-branch of the chiefs of staff committee, submitting its reports, in the first instance, to the service chiefs. 37. Aldrich, “Secret Intelligence for a Post-War World,” 15–16. 38. Richard Aldrich and Michael Coleman, “The Cold War, the JIC and British Signals Intelligence, 1948,” Intelligence and National Security 4, no. 3 (1989), 535–36, and appendix 2. 39. The Cabinet Office secret information center was a World War II innovation dating from 1941. Its principal purpose was to make political intelligence assessments more readily available to senior military personnel through the creation of a centralized repository. 40. Chaired by the Minister of Defense, the Cabinet Malaya Committee was established in 1950 to review the progress of counterinsurgency in Malaya and to make recommendations to Cabinet about Malaya policy. Other members included the secretaries of state for colonies and for Commonwealth relations, the commissioner-general for South East Asia; and, when practical, the high commissioner for the Federation of Malaya. 41. MacMahon, Colonialism and Cold War, 173–75, 189–200. 42. TNA, CAB 121/707, F10515/5/62, Ernest Bevin conversation with Dr Beel, July 19, 1948. 43. Ironically, in 1944 the Foreign Office justified support for the restoration of French and Dutch colonial rule, in part, as a safeguard to Indian and Australasian postwar security. See NAA, A989/1, item E1944/350/14/2, copy of FO memorandum “France,” sent to Department of External Affairs, May 8, 1944. 44. Nehru’s Indian government mobilized Asian opposition to Dutch colonial policy, and was determined to protect the interests of Indonesia’s large Indian settler population. Indian-led action such as the refusal to allow transit of Dutch military supplies and prohibition of Dutch commercial flights exposed the British government to stronger international criticism for failing to respond in kind. TNA, CO 547/4560, CO international relations department memorandum, “Dutch aircraft service to Indonesia,” 1949. 45. TNA, CAB 158/7, JIC(49)59FINAL, Annex I: JIC report, “Intelligence Organization in the Far East,” 1949; Aldrich, “Secret Intelligence for a Post-War World,” 37. The JIC Far East, the JIB Melbourne, and service attachés in London, Ottawa, and Canberra were key channels in this intelligence exchange. 46. NAA, CRS, A1068/1, E47/12/6/1, Australian legation (Paris) dispatches to H.V. Evatt, no. 81, December 30, 1946; no. 6, January 12, 1947; and no. 10, February 6, 1947. 47. Prime Minister Chifley and the Department of External Affairs were frustrated by Australia’s dependence on the British service chiefs and the JIC in the formulation of strategic policy in South East Asia. See David Lee, Search for Security: The Political Economy of Australia’s Postwar Foreign and Defense Policy (Canberra: Allen and Unwin, 1995), 104–5. 48. Christopher Waters, The Empire Fractures: Anglo-Australian Conflict in the 1940s (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 1995), 173–74; David Lee, “The Curtin and Chifley Governments: Liberal Internationalism and World Organization,”

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in David Lee and Christopher Waters, eds., Evatt to Evans: The Labor Tradition in Australian Foreign Policy (Canberra: Allen and Unwin, 1997), 59–60. 49. NAA, CA46, A816/28, file 19/311/86, Department of Defense file no. 2: “French Indo-China,” 1948; A1838/278, 463/2/1/2, parts 1 and 2, Australian Commissioner for Malaya to Department of External Affairs, summary memos on IndoChina, December 10, 1947 and December 3, 1948. 50. NAA, CRS, A5954/69, item 2294/1, Office of the Australian Commissioner for Malaya despatch no. 6/1947 to Department of External Affairs, February 11, 1947. 51. NAA, CRS, A5954/69, item 2294/1, Australian Commissioner for Malaya, despatch no. 11/49 to Secretary, Department of External Affairs, April 4, 1949. 52. NAA, CRS, A1838/283, file 25/1/3, External Affairs to Australian Embassy, Paris, May 25, 1948. 53. Waters, The Empire Fractures, 175–76; David Lowe, “The Colombo Plan,” in David Lowe, ed., Australia and the End of Empires: The Impact of Decolonization in Australia’s Near North, 1945–1965 (Geelong: Deakin University Press, 1996), 105–10. David Lowe stresses the limited range and impact of Robert Menzies’ government’s contribution to the Plan. 54. NAA, CRS, A1838/278, file 461/2/1/1, Nyugen Duc Quy to Evatt, May 22, 1948, External Affairs tel. 42 to Australian Consulate, Bangkok, June 4, 1948. 55. This point was made explicitly during parliamentary debates on March 21 and 25, 1947 regarding the Chifley government’s international policy. Commonwealth of Australia: Parliamentary Debates, session 1946–47, 18th Parliament, 1st session, vol. 190, 1040–41. See also Christopher Waters, “Creating a Tradition: The Foreign Policy of the Curtin and Chifley Labor Governments,” in Lee and Waters, Evatt to Evans, 42–46. 56. For a succinct treatment of these tensions, see Christopher Waters, “Conflict with Britain in the 1940s,” in Lowe, Australia and the End of Empires, 69–86. 57. NAA CRS, A1838/278, file 461/3/1/1, H.V. Evatt, “There Is the Pacific Also,” New York Times, April 4, 1948. 58. See, for example, NAA, A1838/278, 463/6/2/2, part 1, Australian Commissioner for Malaya to Department of External Affairs, April 12, 1948. 59. NAC, RG 24, series C1, microfilm reel C-11630, file 712-221-16-1, Paris Embassy, bimonthly political intelligence report, June 16, 1947; D’Argenlieu made no secret of his hostility to compromise with the Viet Minh in late 1946, see Documents Diplomatiques Français 1946, vol. 2, doc. 216, D’Argenlieu to Bidault, October 19, 1946. 60. NAC, RG 24, series C1, microfilm reel C-11630, file 712-221-16-1, tel. 53, Vanier to External Affairs (EA), January 18, 1949. 61. NAC, RG 24, series C1, reel C-11630, file 712-221-16-1, tel. 157, Vanier to EA, March 8, 1949. 62. Ibid., tel. 236, Vanier to EA, March 18, 1949. 63. Lawrence, Assuming the Burden, 210–11. 64. TNA, FO 371/83592, F1011/1, Frank Gibbs to FO, “French Indo-China: Annual Review for 1949,” dispatched February 28, 1950. 65. The extent of Chinese aid to the Viet Minh in 1950 is discussed in Qiang Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950–1975 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina

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Press, 2000); Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), chapter 5. 66. Initially, the official chosen was the head of the Foreign Office service liaison department, later a representative of the permanent undersecretaries department. 67. TNA, CAB 158/3, JIC(48)20, JIC report, “Review of J.I.C. Organization and Procedure,” February 27, 1948. Extended JIC strategic coverage exposed the JIC’s personnel shortage, in its secretariat above all. 68. Like its London parent, the JIC Far East was chaired by a Foreign Office official. Its membership included the commissioner-general for South East Asia’s deputy for colonial affairs, senior intelligence officers from the three armed forces serving on the military staff of Far East Command, the heads of the MI5 and MI6 Far East stations, and a representative of the JIB Singapore. See TNA, CAB 158/7, JIC(49) 59FINAL, appendix to annex I: “Charter for Joint Intelligence Committee, Far East,” n.d. 69. See, for example, TNA, CAB 158/1, JIC(47)36FINAL, JIC report, “Future Situation in Indonesia,” July 13, 1947; CAB 158/6, JIC(49)33, JIC report, “Communist Influence in the Far East, Annex: Survey of Communism in Individual Countries in the Far East,” April 29, 1949; CAB 158/7, JIC(49)68FINAL, “The Likelihood and Probable Effects of a French Withdrawal from Part or the Whole of French Indo-China,” August 25, 1949. All reports based on intelligence supplied by the JIC Far East. 70. TNA, CAB 158/7, JIC(49)59/Annex I, JIC report, “Intelligence Organization in the Far East,” 1949. 71. Aldrich, “Secret Intelligence for a Post-War World,” 16–17, 25–26, 34–35. 72. TNA, CAB 158/7, JIC(49)59/Annex I, JIC report, “Intelligence Organization in the Far East,” 1949. 73. The lack of comprehensive topographical data for Vietnam became a more pressing issue for the British Far East Command in 1949 as fears of Chinese intervention grew, see TNA, CAB 158/8, JIC(49)101, JIC report, “Photographic Reconnaissance of French Indo-China,” October 27, 1949. 74. As examples, see TNA, FO 371/75973, Saigon fortnightly political summaries, final quarter, 1949. 75. For instance, see TNA, CAB 121/707: Netherlands East Indies situation reports, 1947–49. 76. For samples of all such reports in 1949, see TNA, FO 371/75995. 77. Ibid. See also FO 371/76007: Monthly political summaries for the commissioner-general for South East Asia, 1949. 78. TNA, CO 537/2637, Arthur Creech Jones circular to colonial governors, April 2, 1948. 79. TNA, CO 537/2637, Sir William Strang (FO) letter to Sir Thomas Lloyd (CO), March 30, 1948. 80. TNA, CO 537/2637, Communism in the Colonies, 1948, CO minutes, April 6, 1948. 81. TNA, CO 537/2637, Note by Sir M. Logan, April 6, 1948. 82. TNA, PREM 8/596, Minister of Food John Strachey to Attlee, “Dutch Blockade of the Netherlands East Indies,” March 19, 1947. For revealing treatments of d’Argenlieu and military commander, General Jean Valluy’s activities. Stein Tønnes-

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son, 1946: Déclenchement de la Guerre d’Indochine (Paris: Editions L’Harmattan, 1987), 136–96, passim; Philippe Devillers, Paris-Saigon-Hanoi: Les Archives de la Guerre, 1944–1947 (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1988), 285–325; Martin Shipway, The Road to War: France and Vietnam, 1944–1947 (Oxford: Berghahn, 1996), 260–67. 83. TNA, CAB 121/707, tel. 407, FO circular telegram to overseas stations, October 9, 1948 84. TNA, CAB 121/707, F14126/45/62, consul-general Shepherd memorandum to Bevin, “Cease Fire Order in Java and Sumatra,” October 21, 1947. 85. TNA, WO 203/2665, British military mission, Hanoi, report no. 1, Appendix C, “Information on the Viet Minh Forces, Tonkin, 25 November–23 December 1945.” 86. The British were well placed to judge French equipment quality as the Attlee government was committed to help revitalize the French armaments industry and help meet chronic equipment shortages in the short term. See TNA, CAB 158/2, JIC(47) 71FINAL, JIC report, “Military Collaboration with France—Estimate of the French Armament Industry and Armed Forces in 1951,” December 16, 1947. 87. TNA, FO 371/69654, F3935/255/86, British military liaison officer, Saigon, “Military Situation, French Indochina,” February 24, 1948. 88. TNA, FO 371/69654, F4551/255/86, South East Asian Department to Saigon Consulate, April 14, 1948. Most of those killed were Cambodian escort troops. 89. TNA, FO 371/79546, Z1093/0111/29, Sir Philip Nichols (The Hague) to Bevin, February 4, 1949. 90. Pierre van der Eng, “Marshall Aid as a Catalyst in the Decolonization of Indonesia, 1947–49,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 19 (September 1988), 335–52. 91. Deborah Kisatsky, “The United States, the French Right, and American Power in Europe, 1946–1958,” The Historian 65, no. 3 (2003), 615–34. 92. Marc Michel, “L’Empire colonial dans les débats parlémentaires,” in Serge Berstein and Pierre Milza, eds., L’Année 1947 (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 2000), 191–201; James I. Lewis, “The French Colonial Service and the Issues of Reform, 1944–48,” Contemporary European History 4 (1995), 157–69; and Lewis, “The Tragic Career of Marius Moutet,” European History Quarterly 38, no. 1 (2008), 66–92; Alain-Gérard Marsot, “The Crucial Year: Indochina 1946,” Journal of Contemporary History 19 (1984), 337–54. 93. This was something picked up on by Canadian ambassador, George Vanier, but not by his British counterpart, Oliver Harvey, see National Archives of Canada (NAC) Ottawa, Department of National Defense files, RG 24, series C1, microfilm reel C-11630, file 712-221-16-1, Paris Embassy, fortnightly political intelligence reports 1946–1949, fortnightly summary no. 13, August 4, 1948. 94. Martin Thomas, “The Colonial Policies of the Mouvement Républicaine Populaire, 1944–54: From Reform to Reaction,” English Historical Review, 476 (April 2003), 396–97, 406–9. 95. TNA, CAB 158/1, JIC(47)36FINAL, JIC report, “Future Situation in Indonesia,” July 13, 1947. 96. TNA, CAB 158/7, JIC(49)68FINAL, “The Likelihood and Probable Effects of a French Withdrawal from Part or the Whole of French Indo-China,” August 25, 1949. 97. TNA, CAB 158/1, JIC(47)36FINAL, JIC report, “Future Situation in Indonesia,” July 13, 1947. Commenting on the first Dutch police action, the JIC Far East

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estimated, for example, that Dutch forces would probably be able to occupy major towns and economically vital areas in Java and Sumatra, but would be unable to prevent indefinite guerrilla activity. 98. TNA, CAB 158/6, JIC(49)33, JIC report, “Communist Influence in the Far East, Annex: Survey of Communism in Individual Countries in the Far East,” April 29, 1949; CAB 158/7, JIC(49)68FINAL, “The Likelihood and Probable Effects of a French Withdrawal from Part or the Whole of French Indo-China,” August 25, 1949. 99. TNA, CAB 121/707, F10515/5/62, Ernest Bevin conversation with Dr. Beel on July 19, 1948. 100. Key works include Anthony Short, The Communist Insurrection in Malaya, 1948–1960 (London: Muller, 1975); A.J. Stockwell, British Policy and Malay Politics during the Malayan Union Experiment (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1979); Richard Stubbs, Hearts and Minds in Guerrilla Warfare: The Malayan Emergency (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); Nicholas J. White, Business, Government, and the End of Empire: Malaya, 1942–1957 (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1996); Smith, Britain’s Relations with the Malay Rulers; Karl Hack, Defence and Decolonisation in South East Asia, Britain, Malaya and Singapore, 1941–1968 (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2001); Tim Harper, The End of Empire and the Making of Malaya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 101. C. Mary Turnball, “British Planning for Post-War Malaya,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 5, no. 2 (1974), 239–54; Wong Lin Ken, “The Malayan Union: A Historical Retrospect,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 12, no. 1 (1982), 184–91. 102. Stockwell, “British Imperial Policy,” 68–87. 103. Hack, “South East Asia and British Strategy,” 312. 104. Excellent, though opposing, views of this historiography are Karl Hack, “‘Iron Claws on Malaya’: The Historiography of the Malayan Emergency,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 30, no. 1 (1999), 99–125; Simon C. Smith, “General Templer and Counter-Insurgency in Malaya: Hearts and Minds, Intelligence, and Propaganda,” Intelligence and National Security 16, no. 3 (2001), 60–78. 105. For details of the Briggs Plan, see TNA, Malaya Committee files, CAB 21/1681, COS(50)216, Chiefs of Staff committee memorandum, “Federation Plan for the Elimination of the Communist Organization and Armed Forces in Malaya,” June 27, 1950; reproduced in BDEEP: Malaya, vol. 2, doc. 216. In the context of successful British counterinsurgency in Malaya, it is worth noting that in late 1950 the British government considered the despatch of British jungle warfare experts from Malaya to help train South Vietnamese troops, see NAA, A1838/278, 464/1/1/2, Australian Embassy (Washington) despatch no. 48/50 to Department of External Affairs, December 29, 1950. Karl Hack, “Screwing Down the People: The Malayan Emergency, Decolonization and Ethnicity,” in Hans Antlov and Stein Tonnesson, eds., Imperial Policy and South East Asian Nationalism (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1995), 84–93. 106. Karl Hack, “British Intelligence and Counter-Insurgency in the Era of Decolonization: The Example of Malaya,” Intelligence and National Security 14, no. 2 (1999), 124–55. 107. Smith, “General Templer,” 62–75; Kumar Ramakrishna, “‘Transmogrifying’ Malaya: The Impact of Sir Gerald Templer (1952–1954),” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 32, no. 1 (2001), 79–92, and his “‘Bribing the Reds to Give Up’: Rewards Policy in the Malayan Emergency,” War in History 9, no. 3 (2002), 332–53.

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108. Kumar Ramakrishna, Emergency Propaganda: The Winning of Malayan Hearts and Minds, 1948–1958 (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2002), 159, 204–5. 109. BDEEP: Malaya, vol. 2, doc. 160, Malayan Security Service political/intelligence journal 15/48, August 15, 1948. 110. TNA, CO 537/2793, Arthur Creech Jones circular to colonial governments, “Colonial Office Review of Colonial Police and Security Forces Following Communist Infiltration in Malaya,” August 5, 1948. 111. TNA, CAB 158/8, JIC(49)82FINAL, JIC report, “Intelligence organization in the Far East—Comment on Sir Henry Gurney despatch,” October 20, 1949. For the Malayan Communist perspective on events, see Aloysius Chin, The Communist Party of Malaya: The Inside Story (Kuala Lumpur: Vinpress, 1994), and C. C. Chin and Karl Hack, eds., Dialogues with Chin Peng: New Light on the Malayan Communist Party (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2004). 112. A point stressed by Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech Jones in his initial advice to Cabinet about the origins of the Malayan Emergency, see BDEEP: Malaya, vol. 2, doc. 153, “The Situation in Malaya,” Cabinet memorandum by Secretary of State for Colonies Arthur Creech Jones, July 1, 1948; doc. 140, note by W. L. Blythe on the Chinese dimension, March 1948. 113. BDEEP: Malaya, vol. 2, doc. 163, Letter from Sir T. Lloyd to Sir F. Gimson and Sir A. Newboult, August 23, 1948. In a letter to Lloyd in December 1948, High Commissioner Gurney acknowledged that the federation administrations were “out of touch with their Chinese communities.” See doc. 172, Sir H. Gurney letter to Sir T. Lloyd on the problems and methods of winning Chinese support, December 20, 1948. 114. TNA, CO 537/5658, tel. 90. Rangoon Embassy to FO South East Asia Department, November 6, 1950. 115. Ovendale, “Britain, the United States, and the Cold War,” 449, 456–57. 116. TNA, CO 537/3550, Malcolm MacDonald, Singapore, to M. E. Dening, FO, July 26, 1948. 117. TNA, CO 537/3550, Esler Dening reply letter to MacDonald, August 12, 1948. 118. Susan L. Carruthers, “A Red under Every Bed? Anti-Communist Propaganda and Britain’s Response to Colonial Insurgency,” Contemporary Record 9, no. 2 (1995), 298–303. 119. TNA, FO 371/76021, tel. 638, Gurney to Secretary of State for Colonies, October 6, 1949. 120. TNA, FO 371/76021, tel. 638, Gurney to Secretary of State for Colonies, May 28, 1949. 121. TNA, FO 371/76021, F15689/10140/61, M. E. Dening, South East Asian department, letter to J.J. Paskin, Colonial Office, October 28, 1949. 122. TNA, CAB 158/6, JIC(49)33, JIC report, “Communist Influence in the Far East, Annex: Survey of Communism in Individual Countries in the Far East,” 29 April 1949. 123. TNA, CAB 134/497, MAL.C(50)14, Malaya Committee memorandum by Secretary of State for Colonies, “Outline of Future Anti-Bandit Policy in Malaya,” May 12, 1950. 124. TNA, CO 537/5658, FO note for tripartite foreign ministers’ meeting, September 1, 1950.

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125. TNA, CO 537/5658, tel. 847, Sterndale-Bennett, Commission-General, South East Asia, to FO South East Asian Department, November 2, 1950. 126. TNA, CAB 158/11, JIC(50)94, “Threat to the French Position in Indochina,” November 9, 1950. 127. This counterfactual speculation cannot be taken too far. Whatever their differing interpretations, two of the shrewdest analysts of the Malayan Emergency have highlighted the numerical weakness, transient membership, and misguided terror tactics of the MRLA, all factors that make direct comparison with the Viet Minh problematic. See Hack, “British Intelligence and Counter-Insurgency,” 142; Ramakrishna, “Bribing the Reds to Give Up,” 335. 128. NAA, A1838/283, item 463/6/2/1, Saigon Consul letter to Paul Grey (FO), November 16, 1948. 129. For example, Martin Shipway concludes from his examination of Foreign Office appreciations of French policy in Indochina between 1946 and 1949 that British reportage shifted from making generally unfavorable comparisons between British and French colonial practice to “resigned acceptance” of French policy as the Cold War intensified in South East Asia. See Shipway, “British Perceptions,” 96. 130. Frank Furedi argues that Whitehall shock at events in Malaya formed part of a more general crisis of British imperial rule in 1948 that produced fundamental revisions of colonial policy in Africa and Asia. See Furedi, Colonial Wars and the Politics of Third World Nationalism (London: I.B. Tauris, 1998), chapter 3.

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5. Soviet Cold War Strategy and Prospects of Revolution in South and Southeast Asia Ilya V. Gaiduk

For many years Soviet foreign policy during the Cold War has been depicted in the West mostly in black and white with few “gray” tones. The Soviet Union was portrayed as the principal instigator of insurgency movements in various countries and as the main receiver of benefits from the changes resulting from them. It was presented as rigidly oriented to confrontation with the West whenever and wherever possible, and averse to any compromise, either out of caution or common sense. Even today such views are entrenched in a part of the scholarly community. With the release of new documents from Russian archives, however, this approach has began to be modified and it becomes evident that the Soviet position varied depending on situational specifics in Cold War the confrontation and the region where this confrontation took place. Obviously, Soviet leaders were not guided only by ideological dogma, but had to take into account many factors and considerations that influenced their final decisions that according to country and moment. Soviet policy toward Europe was more rigid and aggressive because it the Soviets were most strongly interested in this region, and thus Moscow was less inclined to compromise on its basic objectives. In other parts of the world, such as certain regions of Asia that were distant from Soviet borders by thousands of kilometers and many intervening borders, the Kremlin generally took a more reserved attitude, as developments there did not have direct impact on Soviet positions in the world. Moreover, great geographical and cultural remoteness provoked considerations of overstretching limited resources, especially if prospects there did not seem to be promising.

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As a result, even in the periods of the most acute rivalry during the Cold War, as in the late 1940s to early 1950s, Soviet leaders were by no means in a hurry to offer its moral, let alone material aid, to insurgency movements in Asian countries, trying instead to educate communist leaders in those countries by pointing at the lack of the necessary conditions for their success. This attitude in the aforementioned period was determined by several factors. As concerns the first years of the Cold War, Stalin’s lack of belief in prospects of communist revolution in Asian countries and his distrust of local leaders strongly influenced the Soviet state’s policy toward communist movements there. Stalin considered most Asian countries unprepared for revolution and the establishment of regimes similar to the current ones in the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries. He was convinced that the Asian countries had a long way to go before they would be able to overthrow the power of local landlords and bourgeoisie supported by international imperialism. Even if communists were successful in their struggle for power, as in China, he did not regard those countries as truly socialist, and believed that they would need a long period of economic, political, and social transformation before they could rightfully claim equal status with the Soviet Union and its East European allies. Thus, in Stalin’s view, those countries could not be reliable in competing alongside the Soviet Union with the West. Such an attitude was influenced by the Soviet leader’s former experience of dealing with the Asian liberation movement, which dated from the 1920s. At that time he regarded the struggle of Asian peoples for independence only through the prism of communist revolution in European countries. For example, in March 1925 he concluded that because of the temporary stabilization in the West, revolutionary prospects seemed more promising in the East. Therefore, it was necessary for the Western communist parties to find forms and methods of coordination of the struggle of the working class of advanced countries and national revolutionary movements in the colonies and dependent countries.1 Stalin’s enthusiasm about Asia proved to be fatal for the Chinese communists who followed instructions from Moscow regarding participation in the national liberation struggle and, in particular, in relationships with the Guomindang. This acquiescence cost the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dearly, as plans to occupy leading positions in the alliance with the nationalists and to accelerate revolutionary process in the country were unsuccessful.2 At the same time, the outcome of the events in China in 1926–1927 discouraged Stalin from an overly optimistic approach to the idea of revolution in Asia.3 Moreover, his failure to correctly predict developments in China made him suspicious whenever it became necessary to deal with local communists.

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In subsequent years, Stalin never paid much attention to the East. Such an attitude was mainly conditioned by general preoccupations of Soviet foreign policy with Europe, where the danger of the new war was becoming more evident in the 1930s. It is likewise understandable that during World War II, Moscow could not afford to pay much attention to events in Asia if they were not directly related to the Soviet struggle against Germany and Japan. Yet the end of the war did not significantly change Soviet policy toward the Asian people’s struggle for their independence and against Western colonialism. Even China, at first, was not an exception. As to Vietnam, Moscow took no immediate notice of the 1945 August Revolution and no steps toward recognition and support of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), although overall reaction might have been sympathetic.4 Soviet policy toward Vietnam after World War II was determined by processes that were under way in France where communists occupied ministerial posts in the government. Stalin did not want to undermine prospects of the French Communist Party (PCF) in its bid for power by supporting the struggle for independence in Indochina, a part of France’s colonial empire. As a result, all contacts with Ho Chi Minh at that time went through the French communists who warned the Viet Minh that any “premature adventures” toward independence might “not be in line with Soviet perspectives.” The PCF did not block the first Indochina war budget and all emergency measures connected with prosecution of the war. It is therefore not surprising that conservative deputies in the National Assembly of France applauded “their own Communist colleagues and the Soviet Union for leaving France to fight its war in Indochina without outside disturbance.” And the French Socialist premier, Jean Ramadier, praised the “correct attitude of the Soviet Government” in the Indochina question.5 The Soviet approach to the national liberation movement in Asia was directly related to Stalin’s attitude toward local leaders. He regarded them as a product of conditions and circumstances in which they had to live and pursue their activities. And since he was skeptical about their countries’ preparedness for the communist revolution, he likewise doubted their ability to lead such a revolution. In addition, he did not trust those leaders whom he could not control. Stalin’s distrust that he demonstrated toward, first, Mao Zedong, and, then, Ho Chi Minh, is well known from documents and memoirs of witnesses.6 French communist leader Maurice Thorez once confided to the Hungarian “comrades” that “Stalin was somewhat distrustful of Ho and his group.” According to Thorez, he thought that Ho Chi Minh went too far in his contacts with U.S. and British intelligence. Furthermore, the Soviet leader was annoyed by Ho’s unwillingness to seek Stalin’s advice and consent prior to taking ac-

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tion. As an example, Thorez mentioned the dissolution of the Indochinese communist party in 1945, and complained that he had had a hard time convincing Stalin that it was just a tactical step in order to win the support of Vietnamese nationalists.7 It is clear from Thorez’s testimony that Stalin suspected Ho as being too independent and nationalist oriented to be a loyal follower of the Soviet political line. Apparently, Stalin was informed that in 1945 the United States assisted the Viet Minh in establishing an intelligence network and guerrilla army against Japanese troops in Indochina. Moreover, American equipment continued to be shipped to the Viet Minh even after Japan’s surrender. It was brought in on American aircraft, by American pilots.8 Ho Chi Minh tried to win U.S. recognition later as well, and secret direct contacts took place between representatives of the Viet Minh and the Americans in 1946 and 1947.9 This added substance to Stalin’s suspicion toward the Vietnamese communist leader. As one of the former Soviet officials who was for years closely involved in Moscow’s policy toward Vietnam noted, the influence of the “Yugoslavian syndrome” determined vigilance of the Soviets toward those foreign Communist leaders “who were inclined to take into account in their decision making local conditions and specifics more seriously than it is considered acceptable in the Kremlin.”10 That Ho Chi Minh belonged to this category was obvious to Moscow for a long time. In a memorandum titled “Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam” on January 14, 1950, the Soviet Foreign Ministry drew attention to the fact that in Ho Chi Minh’s statements to foreign correspondents, there is some ambiguity. . . . Speaking about the Vietnam government’s attitude toward the U.S., Ho Chi Minh evades the issue of U.S. expansionist policy toward Vietnam. . .. Until now Ho Chi Minh abstained from the assessment of Imperialist nature of the North Atlantic Pact and of the U.S. attempt to establish a Pacific bloc as a branch of this pact.11 Such reticence on the part of a foreign communist leader could not be perceived favorably by the Soviet leadership, and especially by Stalin who was suspicious of any independent behavior. But it would be unwise to explain Soviet policy toward national liberation movements in Asia in the early period of the Cold War by exclusive focus on Stalin’s prejudices and phobias, however strongly they might have contributed to Moscow’s policy in the region. Preoccupation with the European theater of the Cold War was, in my view, another reason why, generally, the Soviet Union pursued a passive policy in Asia, avoiding drastic actions and unnecessary publicity in its contacts with the representatives of the local communist and

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procommunist forces. Throughout its history, imperial Russia and the Soviet Union attempted to avoid waging war on two fronts. And although the Cold War was not a real one in the most straightforward sense, it required from the Soviets too much effort and energy to allow the dispersion of this energy among numerous tasks and objectives. However clearly Stalin demonstrated at times his inclination to bold actions and unpredicted steps in the international arena, he was not at all prepared to risk Soviet goals in Europe, which he regarded as more important for his country’s positions in the Cold War, by undertaking precipitous measures in other parts of the globe. Even the overall deterioration of the situation in Europe in 1947 and failure of all attempts to consolidate communist power beyond the limits reached by the Soviet army by the end of World War II did not significantly change Moscow’s policy toward the national liberation movement in Asia, and in Indochina in particular. Although Andrei Zhdanov, the principal Soviet ideologist, singled out Vietnam and Indonesia in his speech commemorating the foundation of the Cominform in 1947,12 his words were not followed by any practical steps except those of a propaganda nature. Moscow continued its policy of a successful “divorce” of its interest in the colonial question from the goals in the West.13 The process of reappraisal began only after the communist victory in China in 1949. At the same time, Moscow could not afford to completely ignore developments in Asia, which was going through a phase of struggle for independence and the establishment of new states. This would not only go against the main tenets of Marxism-Leninism, a perspective that always regarded colonial and semicolonial countries as a potential reservoir of communist revolution. Even from the geostrategic point of view, the Soviet leaders had to win the confidence of liberation movements there not merely as allies in confrontation with Western countries, especially the United States, but also as possible future rulers of newly independent states. An illustration of the Soviets’ cautious attitude toward processes outside Europe could be found in Stalin’s correspondence and meetings with communist representatives from Asia in late 1950 to early 1951. Moscow’s views on prospects of revolution in Asia and, respectively, Soviet policy toward the region of South and Southeast Asia could be more or less fully revealed on the basis of documents relating to the Soviet leader’s contacts with the envoys from fraternal parties engaged in struggles against imperialism. Before discussing in detail what transpired in Moscow in this period, it is worth remembering that the Allied victory in World War II stimulated national liberation struggles in many Asian countries in the late 1940s. The European colonial empires began to disintegrate and all efforts by those powers to pre-

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vent this disintegration, such as those of France in Indochina, were clearly doomed. In Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia, people were determined to fight for their independence and to establish their own nation-states that would deal with other countries in the world on equal footing. India became independent in 1947. In Indonesia, whose independence was proclaimed in 1945, in the late 1940s a long struggle against the Dutch was nearing its end. In Indochina, the Viet Minh, a broad association of political parties, achieved success in liberating considerable portions of Vietnam from the French. Communist parties played a role in these events that varied by country. The most spectacular was the victory of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in China in 1949. Not surprisingly, Indian, Indonesian, Vietnamese, and other communists often referred to China as an example of what should be the ultimate goal of communist parties in their countries in efforts aimed at liberation from foreign imperialists and their local allies. The subject of China and the experience of the Chinese communists surfaced more than once in the correspondence and conversations between Stalin and local communists as well. Sometime in the fall of 1950, Moscow received a letter and a collection of materials from leaders of the Communist Party of India (CPI) that contained information about their party’s situation and, apparently, a request for a personal meeting with the Soviet leaders. In a response sent to New Delhi to Rajeshwar Rao, secretary general of the CPI, Moscow confirmed the receipt of the materials and agreed on the necessity of a personal meeting with Indian communist leaders “for the clarification of unclear issues.”14 At almost the same time, on October 14, 1950, Moscow received from China, which served as an intermediary, a document prepared by representatives of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) that reflected local communists’ interpretation of the situation in Indonesia and prospects for revolutionary struggle in that country.15 The materials received from India and Indonesian communists had many ideas in common. Both emphasized armed struggle to overthrow the yoke of world imperialism and its local “puppets.” Both regarded China as an example for their activities and both expected blessings of their plans from the powerful Soviet Union. Not surprisingly, Stalin’s response to these two appeals was almost identical, with the differences being conditioned by the specifics of those two countries. The Soviet leader studied the documents received from the two communist parties with great attention, indicated by his underlining and handwritten notes in the margins. The letter by the Indonesian communists passed on to Stalin by Liu Shaoqi evaluated the situation in the country after the failure of the second Dutch intervention to suppress the national liberation movement and after the establishment of the United States of Indonesia as a result of the deci-

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sions of the Round Table Conference, which took place in The Hague from August 23 to November 2, 1949. The Indonesian communists were declaring the necessity of “armed revolution” against the “armed counterrevolution” during the subsequent period of creating a unified state and constitutional regime. They were planning to liquidate completely the “domination of the Dutch, American, English imperialists” and their agents. These tasks were considered necessary to establish a “strong and steadfast” People’s Liberation Army, all of which comprised the first point of their program.16 The program also envisaged the alliance of Indonesia with the USSR, China, and “people’s democracy” countries. It stated that victory of the revolution in Indonesia is possible only after a “hard, prolonged, and serious” struggle. It also admitted the necessity, along with clandestine activities, of legal work among the masses and participation in the parliament.17 Stalin dictated a response in which he gave a thorough analysis of the Indonesian communists’ program. While discussing its points, the Soviet leader revealed his views on general issues of the national liberation movement in Asia and on communist tactics in the guerrilla war situation. From the outset the Soviet leader rejected the first point of the program proclaiming the necessity of the “armed revolution.” From his point of view, the main task before the Indonesian communists was liquidation of the feudal landed property and its transfer to peasants. In other words, the principal objective of the communists, according to Stalin, should be agrarian reform. “If the Communist Party as the party of the working class understands all importance of this agrarian revolution and helps peasants in this matter,” declared Stalin, “the unity of the working class and the peasantry would be guaranteed.”18 The second task, as it was formulated by the Soviet leader, was organizing a united front in the struggle for complete independence of Indonesia. Stalin underlined that initially this front should not be aimed against all foreign imperialists. Its goal must be the “expulsion of the Dutch imperialists with their armed forces, nationalization of their property, breach with Holland and the declaration of full independence of Indonesia.” The same measures were to be applied to Anglo–American imperialists only if they involve themselves in the “brawl” and support the Dutch with their armed forces. In this event, according to Stalin, the front would be well advised to struggle against all imperialists.19 As to alliance with the Soviet Union, China, and other socialist countries, Stalin suggested “to throw out this thing from the document as incompatible.”20 With this interesting remark, Stalin completed discussion of the strategic issues and turned to tactics. He began this portion of his letter by considering the expediency of the “armed revolution” method, that is, guerrilla war in rural areas. Here he often refers to the experience of the civil war in China. How-

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ever, unlike in China, this method could be applied only with “substantial limitations” in Indonesia. Stalin explains why: “First, successful application of the method of guerrilla war presupposes the existence of a large country that has a number of forestry and mountainous areas far from railways and cities.” As to establishing liberated guerrilla zones, in Stalin’s view, they would represent just an island in the country and could be encircled by the enemy even if people’s liberation army detachments were established there. The main weakness, said Stalin, was the absence of a “solid rear.” Of course, it is possible to leave a liberated guerrilla zone, to cut through the encirclement and to establish a new zone in another locale. But the new zone has no insurance against new encirclement. Stalin continued: That is what happened with the Chinese Communists. But, at last, they found a good way out, when they moved to Manchuria and found there a solid rear in the friendly Soviet state. It is noteworthy that only after the Chinese comrades had obtained the solid rear and only after they had leaned on the USSR as on their own rear, the enemy lost possibilities to encircle them, while the Chinese Communists got opportunity to wage planned offensive against the Chiang Kai-shek army from north to south21 (emphasis added). Next, Stalin drew attention of the Indonesian communists to the fact that they did not have such an opportunity nor did they have their own armed forces. Where was the solution? It could be found, according to the Vozhd’ (Boss), in combining the methods of guerrilla war and the struggle of the working class in the form of economic and political strikes. Stalin also touched on the situation within the Communist Party of Indonesia, warning against the “spirit of leftism,” and “unlimited discussions” among its members. He criticized the desire of the communists to resolve all problems in the country “by one stroke”: the liquidation of feudalism, breach with the Netherlands, elimination of all imperialists, overthrow of the reactionary government, and liquidation of the kulaks. Instead, Stalin favored practical, “molecular,” “dirty” work in the sphere of the everyday needs of workers, peasants, and intelligentsia. “Only here,” declared the Vozhd’, it is possible “to rally broad masses of the working people around the Party. Of course, this work will be without luster and chic, without high-sounding proclamations. But this is now, under present conditions in Indonesia, the most fruitful work”22 (emphasis added). As in the “proposals” from the Indonesians, Stalin’s attention in the Indian case was concentrated on those sections of documents received from the CPI

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that were devoted to armed struggle, creation of the united front of workers, peasants, and petty bourgeoisie, and the internal party situation. On the margins of the section titled “Draft Statement of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India on Party Policy,” which focused on the National Democratic Front and included a paragraph on the build-up of the people’s democratic regime only by means of the united front and armed struggle, Stalin wrote, “Not right.”23 Stalin also left his notes on a report submitted to him by the members of the Soviet Politburo who met with the Indians soon after their arrival in Moscow in February 1951 to determine their views on the principal issues of discord within the CPI. Space limitations prevent discussion of the details surrounding such disagreements. Suffice it to note that there were two main factions in the party. One faction insisted on the necessity to initiate armed struggle in India, and to create liberated regions and then to spread them over the whole of India. Its members were enthusiastic about China’s example and wished to follow it in their own struggle. CPI Secretary General Rao belonged to this faction. Another group was skeptical about the success of armed struggle, criticized an “automatic transference of Chinese experience to India,” and insisted instead on propaganda among workers and peasantry, support for peace efforts, and land reform.24 These disagreements are of interest here only from the view of Stalin’s reaction to them. In this connection, in the section of the report containing questions by the Indians to the Soviet leaders, one notes Stalin’s handwriting on the margins of the question on whether in the present armed struggle was the principal form of class struggle in India: “No!”25 It is worth noting here that the Soviet leader expressed a similar negative attitude toward the issue of armed struggle in his remarks to the “proposals” of the Indonesian communists. In the portion of that document stating the necessity of “armed revolution against armed counterrevolution” by means of the “people’s liberation army that is strong and steadfast in the struggle for national liberation,” Stalin wrote: “Started from the wrong point,” thus indicating his objection to resorting to this form of communist activities in Indonesia.26 Stalin summarized extensively his views on the situation in India and the tasks before the local communists during his personal meeting with the four CPI representatives on February 9, 1951. This conversation was more than three hours long and the Vozhd’ had an opportunity not only to present his opinion on the prospects of revolution in India, but also to give his assessment of the Chinese experience and its applicability to other countries. Almost from the outset, he destroyed the Indian communists’ illusion that they should prepare for socialist revolution in their country. “We do not think that India is standing on the threshold of socialist revolution,” stated the Soviet leader in

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clear words. “India is far away from this phase.” Instead, in Stalin’s opinion, a revolution in India would be agrarian and bourgeois democratic.27 This meant that the CPI must mobilize all peasants and all progressive elements in the national bourgeoisie to isolate feudal lords and British imperialists. As to the latter, Stalin cautioned that initially it was necessary to direct the struggle only against British imperialists, not all imperialists, including the United States. This argument surprised the Indian communists: Why did the Indians have to wage struggle against only British imperialists, while elsewhere in the world everybody fought against the Americans, who represented the vanguard of imperialism? And Stalin patiently explained: Because “the party should not put on its shoulders all the tasks, the tasks of the struggle against the imperialists of the whole world.” The national objective of India was to liberate the country from British imperialists. The struggle should be aimed against the American imperialists as well, only if they got involved.28 As one can see, Stalin was consistent in his recommendations to Asian communists to divide their enemies and avoid having them unite. In his letter to the Indonesian communists, he likewise advised fighting only the Dutch imperialists and their puppets, initially. He further elaborated on this thesis during his meeting with the Indians: “The issues of revolution are being settled through phases. One ought not to mix up all the phases. It is necessary to resolve (the issues) through phases, it is necessary to beat enemies one by one: today these enemies, tomorrow others, and when you become strong enough, it will be possible to beat all of them. So far you are weak.”29 A significant portion of Stalin’s conversation with the Indian Communist leaders was devoted to the issue of armed struggle. Since China’s example was attractive to the Indians as well, the Soviet leader again, as in his letter to the Indonesians, gave his analysis of the success of the Chinese Communist party and compared this success with the conditions existing in India. According to Stalin, the Chinese waged guerrilla war against the Guomindang and established liberated regions that were initially encircled and destroyed by the enemy. Therefore, the Chinese communists had to move from one part of China to another and start all over again. This would have continued indefinitely, if they had not decided to move to Manchuria. “After having moved to Manchuria,” Stalin explained, “they immediately improved their situation; they found a rear in a friendly state. (The liberated region) was already not an island, but a peninsula whose end leaned upon the USSR.” Thus, according to the Soviet leader, the only possibility to win a guerrilla war was “to create a solid rear, to adjoin, to lean upon a friendly neighbor state and to convert it into your own solid rear.”30

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What was the situation in India? Stalin thought that it was less favorable than in China. First, in India there was no People’s Liberation Army, like in China. On the other hand, India was more developed industrially with a dense railway network, which was good, from the point of view of progress, but bad for guerrilla war, since this made it easy for the enemy to reach a liberated region and to encircle it. But what was more important, in Stalin’s view, was that the Indians did not have “a friendly neighbor state, upon which you could lean with your back, like the Chinese guerrillas did in having the USSR behind [them].”31 Stalin named countries that had common borders with India. “Afghanistan, Iran and Tibet, where the Chinese Communists could not get to so far. . .. These are not such a rear, like the USSR. Burma? Pakistan? That is all, as concerns land borders, others are sea borders.” What was the solution? According to the Soviet leader, the solution was in a “serious and active work” among the working class and peasantry, in order to win their confidence, to prepare strikes, to create armed groups of workers.32 In other words, as he did in his letter to the Indonesians, Stalin called on the Indian Communists to turn toward “practical, molecular, ‘dirty’ work on the issues of everyday needs of workers, peasants, working intelligentsia.”33 He admonished the Indian comrades: “One should not hope only for guerrilla war. It renders, of course, assistance, but itself needs assistance. It is necessary to work more among people, workers, in the army, among intelligentsia and peasants.”34 What conclusions could be made from these Stalin’s remarks and advice? First, they destroy one of the Cold War myths about the Soviet dictator who, in the flush of success in the struggle against the Nazis, was nurturing plans of world conquest and was eager to use any means possible to make all countries communist and to do this as soon as possible. Instead, we see Stalin cautioning his comrades from abroad against drastic actions in favor of armed uprisings, insisting on gradual movement from phase to phase, warning that conditions for radical transformations were not ripe yet, and calling for everyday, routine work among the population. Recognizing that China’s example looked very attractive to Asian communists and perhaps fearing that it could inflame them to premature actions, he tried to downplay the Chinese communists’ success, to show that China’s case was an exception, rather than a norm, that Mao Zedong could win only because of the support and assistance from the Soviet Union which had a common border with that country, that such support and assistance were impossible in the case of countries outside immediate proximity with the USSR. He emphasized that even in China a socialist revolution was far from complete, and even criticized the shortcomings of the Chinese

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revolution in that the Chinese communists were isolated from the working class. During his conversation with the Indian communist leaders, Stalin made extensive digressions, telling about the experience of the Bolsheviks in Russia, of Eastern European countries, and of the Chinese with the purpose of demonstrating how different conditions in all these countries were. He emphasized that the East European countries were approaching the phase of socialist revolution. They were moving from agrarian revolution to the expropriation of local bourgeoisie, which was the second phase of socialist transformation. However, “China is far away from this second phase. This phase is also far away from India or India is far away from this phase.”35 To emphasize that the Indian communists should not accelerate the natural course of events and follow blindly other countries’ example, Stalin proclaimed, “The Chinese path is good for China. This is not enough for India.”36 Thus, instead of pushing the Indians to overthrow the existing regime and imposing communist rule in such a big and influential country in Asia, Stalin was eager to persuade them of the long and laborious path to successful communist revolution. He gave the same advice to the Indonesians, and, in my opinion, he would have given similar advice to anyone from Asia, Africa, and Latin America who traveled to Moscow in search of encouragement and support from the Soviet leaders. Does this mean that Stalin did not believe completely in the prospects of successful communist takeover in the Third World? As mentioned earlier in this chapter, Stalin was skeptical about the ability of Asian communists to achieve victory without outside support. But since such support could come only from the Soviet Union, this was the main reason why the Soviet leader was not too eager to encourage any radical steps in countries outside the Soviets’ immediate interests in the Cold War. He was fully aware of the limits of Soviet power and ability in its confrontation with the West, and preferred to concentrate on the areas that were vital for the existence and competitiveness of his country in this confrontation—that is, Europe—rather than to expend resources on projects of only peripheral importance. Only later, in the mid-1950s, when the national liberation movement in the Third World became a real factor in global politics, and the Soviet Union had became more powerful and influential, did the Soviet leaders pay more attention to developments in countries outside their immediate sphere of interest in Europe due to a desire for as many allies as possible, especially in the situation of acute competition with their former Chinese allies for supremacy in the global communist movement. But even then these countries were no more than auxiliary forces in the Cold War that could easily be sacrificed in the name of the superior interests of the Soviet state.

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Notes 1. Charles McLane, Soviet Strategies in Southeast Asia: An Exploration of Eastern Policy under Lenin and Stalin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966), 46. 2. A.V. Meliksetov, ed., Istoriia Kitaia (History of China) (Moscow: Moscow State University Press, 1998), 472—85. 3. See Conrad Brandt, Stalin’s Failure in China, 1924—1927 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958). 4. McLane, 266, 274. 5. Bernard B. Fall, The Two Viet-Nams: Political and Military Analysis, 2nd ed. (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Publishers, 1967), 196. Emphasis in original. 6. See, for example, Khrushchev’s reminiscences about Stalin’s description of Mao Zedong and his views in N.S. Khrushchev, Vremia. Liudi. Vlast’. Vospominaniia v 4-kh kn. (Time. People. Power. Memoirs in four books) (Moscow: Moscow News, 1999), book 3, 23. 7. Janos Radvanyi, Delusion and Reality: Gambits, Hoaxes, and Diplomatic OneUpmanship in Vietnam (South Bend, IN: Gateway Editions, 1978), 4. 8. Fall, The Two Viet-Nams, 70—71. 9. Nguyen Vu Tung, “Coping with the United States: Hanoi’s Search for an Effective Strategy,” in Peter Lowe, ed., The Vietnam War (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998), 31—32. 10. Igor Ognetov, “Ho Chi Minh Came to Moscow Directly from Vietnamese Jungles.” International Affairs 8 (2003), 134. 11. USSR Foreign Ministry memorandum “Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam,” January 14, 1950, Arkhiv vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii (Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation), fond 079, opis’ 4, papka 2, delo 7, listy 12, 13 (hereafter AVP RF). 12. Soveshchaniia Kominforma, 1947, 1948, 1949. Dokumenty i materialy (The Conferences of the Cominform, 1947, 1948, 1949. Documents and Materials) (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1998), 154, 157. 13. McLane, Soviet Strategies in Southeast Asia, 367. 14. Directives to Soviet Ambassador in Delhi, Attachment to message of V. Grigorian, Chairman of Foreign Policy Commission of the Central Committee of the AllUnion Communist Party (Bolsheviks), to Stalin, October 24, 1950. Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsial’no-Politicheskoi Istorii (Russian State Archive of Social Political History), fond 558, opis’ 11, delo 308, list 2 (hereafter RGASPI). 15. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 313. The letter from the Indonesian Communists as well as Stalin’s reply to it have been extensively analyzed by Russian scholar Larisa M. Efimova in an article published in the Cold War History journal, although I strongly disagree with the author’s conclusions based on these materials. See Larisa M. Efimova, “Stalin and the Revival of the Communist Party of Indonesia,” Cold War History, 5, no. 1 (February 2005), 107—20. 16. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 313, l.6. 17. Ibid., ll. 7,8. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., ll. 58—58 rev. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid., l. 59. Emphasis added.

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22. Ibid., l. 61. Emphasis added. 23. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 309, l. 78. 24. G. Malenkov, M. Suslov, V. Grigorian, P. Yudin to Stalin, February 8, 1951. Ibid., d. 310, ll. 1—11. 25. Ibid., l. 9. 26. Ibid., d. 313, l. 6. 27. Record of conversation, Stalin-Rao, Dange, Gosh, and Punnaia, February 9, 1951. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 310, l. 71—72. 28. Ibid., l. 73. 29. Ibid., d. 310, l. 76. 30. Ibid., ll. 77—78. 31. Ibid., l. 78. 32. Ibid., l. 79. 33. Stalin’s letter. Ibid., d. 313, l. 61. 34. Record of conversation. Ibid., d. 310, l. 85. 35. Ibid., l. 72. 36. Ibid., l. 80.

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6. Bridging Revolution and Decolonization: The “Bandung Discourse” in China’s Early Cold War Experience Chen Jian

The years 1954 to 1955 witnessed visible changes in Beijing’s representation of China’s international policies. After its establishment in 1949, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) appeared as a “revolutionary country” on the international scene, challenging the legitimacy of the existing international system controlled by Western imperialist powers—and the United States in particular. Mao Zedong and his comrades made it clear that a primary mission of the “new China” was to destroy the “old world” in which China had been a humiliated member in modern times.1 In the context of the PRC’s revolutionary foreign policy, its international discourse, which reflected the Cold War’s bipolar structure, was dominated by a class-struggle–centered language; and its attitudes toward non-Western, nationalist countries combined harsh criticism with tactics and actions designed to neutralize them in the Cold War confrontation.2 In 1954–1955, a “Bandung discourse,” which had significantly different features from the class-struggle–centered language governing the PRC’s external behavior in its first five years, emerged in Beijing’s representation of its international policies. At the Geneva Conference of 1954, the PRC delegation led by Zhou Enlai took the initiative to meet with delegates from Britain, France, Laos, and Cambodia.3 In late June 1954, during a recess at the conference, Zhou visited India and Burma to meet with Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Burmese Prime Minister U Nu, and together with them, introduced the “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence,” also known as the Pancha shila (or Pancasila).4

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In the wake of the Geneva conference, Beijing actively supported and, then participated in, the Bandung conference of leaders from twenty-nine Asian and African countries in April 1955. The PRC delegation headed by Zhou made extensive efforts to have dialogue with leaders from other countries. The basic tone of Zhou’s conference presentations seemed reconciliatory compared with the revolutionary language that Beijing had adopted in the previous years. Toward the end of the conference, Zhou announced that Beijing was willing to negotiate with Washington for reducing “tensions in the Far East” and solving the problems between China and the United States.5 Scholars of China’s international history and Cold War history have long paid attention to these changes in Chinese foreign policies in 1954–1955. A prevailing interpretation is that the changes reflected Beijing’s intention and action, at least for the moment, toward adopting a more moderate line in its external policies for the purpose of “expanding the new China’s space for activities on the international scene.”6 In this chapter, I argue that the emergence of the Bandung discourse should not be treated as a radical departure in China’s external relations. The PRC’s performance at Geneva and Bandung must be understood in the context of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership’s overall perception of how “revolutionariness” should be defined in Chinese foreign policy, and how the definition evolved in the mid-1950s—in the context that Beijing’s leaders reflected on how better to translate foreign policy challenges into sources of sustained domestic mobilization, and, for this purpose, how to pursue China’s centrality in international affairs and expand China’s influence in the non-Western world.

The CCP’s Early Vision of China and the “World Revolution” In a conceptual sense, the PRC’s foreign policy was made on the basis of the CCP’s comprehension of the changing modern world and China’s position in it in the formative years of the Chinese revolution. In order to understand the context in which the Bandung discourse entered the PRC’s foreign policy representation, it is necessary first to explore the evolution of the CCP’s analyses of the “world proletarian revolution” and its connections with the Chinese revolution. Since its establishment in 1921, the young CCP had persistently followed the lead of the Soviet Bolshevik Party and the Comintern in analyzing the international situation facing the Chinese revolution. In a series of early CCP documents, the Chinese communists regarded the “world revolution” as a unified course by the oppressed classes in various countries in the world. Accordingly, they believed that (1) the interests of the Chinese revolution were fundamen-

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tally compatible with those of the world revolution, and (2) the interests of the Chinese revolution were subordinate to and, therefore, should serve the interests of the world revolution.7 These understandings were in accordance with the fact that the CCP was then a branch of the Comintern, and that the CCP’s establishment would have been impossible had the Comintern not offered direction and support.8 Even when the young Chinese Communists firmly took China’s own revolution as a subordinate part of the world revolution, they had tried to identify specific characteristics of their revolution as results of China’s unique conditions. By 1923, the CCP leadership had identified that “considering China’s economic and political situation, and given the sufferings and requests of various social classes (workers, peasants, industrialists, and merchants) in Chinese society, what is urgently needed (in China) is a national revolution.”9 In the CCP’s early representation of its tasks, a highlighted theme was the connections between the Chinese revolution as one occurring in a “semicolonial and semifeudal” country and the struggles for national liberation by the oppressed peoples in the colonies of Western powers. The Chinese Communists emphasized that “China’s proletarian class must simultaneously carry out the national liberation movement and such complicated struggles as class movements,” and that “our mission is to wage a national revolution to liberate the oppressed Chinese nation and, on the basis of it, to strive toward serving the world revolution, so as to liberate the oppressed nations and classes in the whole world.”10 Even in its infancy, when the CCP depended heavily on the Comintern’s tutelage, the Chinese communists had already begun to define the missions of the Chinese revolution by trying to map out the connections as well as distinctions between the “world revolution” and China’s “national revolution.” Beginning in the late 1920s, in the wake of the CCP’s setbacks following Jiang Jieshi’s bloody anticommunist coup in April 1927, Mao and a group of his comrades moved to the countryside, where they organized the Red Army and, by mobilizing the revolutionary peasantry, waged a violent “land revolution.” Challenging the notion that a communist revolution had to be carried out by urban proletarians, Mao found the necessity and possibility—within the Chinese context—of creating a rural-centered pattern of communist revolution. Supporting this idea in Mao’s conceptual realm were both pragmatism and romanticism. On the one hand, Mao sensed that China’s social conditions —characterized by an overwhelming rural population and insufficient development of urbanization and industrialization—precluded an urban-centered communist revolution; on the other, he perceived that China’s backwardness in development made it easier for a revolution carried out by the peasants—

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who were the most oppressed and, therefore, the most revolutionary group in society—to succeed.11 But the CCP’s rural revolution—still following class-struggle–centered strategies and policies—was poorly carried out in southern China. Facing attacks by Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party, or Nationalists) troops, the Chinese Red Army was pressed to the verge of elimination by the time of the “Long March.” It was the outbreak of China’s war against Japan that provided the CCP with an unprecedented opportunity for development. Holding high the banner of nationalism during the war years, the CCP, its military forces, and its base areas expanded significantly. Mao, who by then had firmly seized the CCP’s leadership role, asserted that “we must take over China” after the end of the war.12 The CCP’s rapid expansion during the war years allowed—or even precipitated—Mao and the CCP leadership to consider how to develop new political, military, and diplomatic strategies and tactics to promote the revolution.13 The dissolution of the Comintern in 1943 also allowed Mao and his comrades to perceive the meanings of the Chinese revolution in terms that they had not developed in the past. In particular, Mao and his comrades began to consider how different patterns of communist revolutions—by reflecting the specific conditions and circumstances of different countries—should develop in the world revolution in the postwar era. At the CCP’s seventh congress, held in Yan’an in April–June 1945, Mao delivered several speeches. In the main speech, entitled “On Coalition Government,” the CCP chairman emphasized that “the two world wars represent two completely different eras.” In defining the new era that would emerge after World War II, he presented a series of non–class-struggle–centered observations, contending that after the end of the war, “the struggles between the antiFascist masses and the remnants of the Fascists, between the forces for democracy and the forces against democracy, and between national liberation and national oppression will prevail in most parts of the world.”14 Thus, we see that new ways of thinking were emerging in Mao’s and the CCP leadership’s conceptualization of the world revolution and China’s position in it: While Mao and his comrades remained loyal to the international communist movement, they had nurtured a new tendency toward constructing new meanings for the Chinese revolution in ways that did not necessarily accord the existing mainstream discourse of the Moscow-centered world revolution. It was against this background that Mao introduced the “intermediate zone” theory.

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Mao’s “Intermediate Zone” Theory In retrospect, the end of China’s war against Japan in August 1945 created new conditions for major changes in the CCP’s external relations. After Japan announced its unconditional surrender on August 15, Mao and the CCP leadership acted immediately to strive for political power. Yet big-power politics were more complicated than what CCP leaders could have imagined. In order to fit China into the Yalta system that Stalin—without consulting with his Chinese comrades—had worked out with the Americans, Moscow recognized Jiang as China’s legitimate leader and pressured the CCP to negotiate with him to avoid a civil war.15 Mao and the CCP, relying heavily on the support from Moscow in their perceived plans to compete for power, had no other choice but follow Stalin’s instruction to pursue compromise with Jiang.16 This experience was of critical importance in the shaping—or reshaping— of Mao’s and the CCP’s overall vision of the connections between the Chinese revolution and the Moscow-led “world revolution.” The CCP still depended on support from Moscow to form a grand strategy in competing with the Nationalists for political power, and the escalation of the Soviet–U.S. confrontation provided the CCP with the much-needed space to carry out the strategy.17 In the meantime, Mao and his comrades developed a stronger sense than ever before that the mission of their revolution must be defined in ways different from what had been dictated by Moscow because of China’s unique domestic and external conditions. Thus, along with the worsening of the Cold War and the Chinese civil war, Mao and his fellow CCP leaders introduced in late 1946 a series of new ideas about the postwar world situation, which the CCP’s propagandists would later characterize as Mao’s “intermediate zone” theory. A distinctive feature of the theory was that Mao and his comrades now tried to perceive the emerging Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States from a China-centered perspective. In an interview in August 1946 with Anna Louis Strong, a leftist American journalist, Mao introduced the “intermediate zone” thesis. He noted that a global confrontation had been emerging between the United States and the Soviet Union. He argued that between the two big powers existed a vast “intermediate zone” in Asia, Africa, and Europe, and that the U.S. imperialists could not directly attack the Soviet Union until they had managed to control the intermediate zone, including China. As a result, concluded Mao, although the postwar world situation seemed to be characterized by the sharp confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States, the principal contradiction in the world was represented by the struggles between peoples in the intermedi-

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ate zone (including China) and the reactionary American ruling class. These struggles, emphasized Mao, would determine not only the direction of the global confrontation between the two superpowers but also the fate of the entire world.18 In early 1947, an important article, published in the name of Lu Dingyi, the CCP’s propaganda chief, provided additional definition of the intermediate zone theory.19 Lu argued that the postwar confrontation on the world scene was between the “antidemocratic forces” headed by Washington and the “peace-loving and democratic forces” headed by Moscow. Therefore, it is true that the international situation in the postwar era had been bipolarized. However, as the United States was separated from the Soviet Union by the intermediate zone in Asia, Africa, and Europe, Washington’s anti-Soviet global strategy was primarily designed for “international expansion in the intermediate zone.” Lu continued: After the end of the Second World War, the principal contradiction in world politics exists not between the capitalist world and socialist Soviet Union, nor between the Soviet Union and the United States, but between the democratic and anti-democratic forces in the capitalist world. More concretely speaking, the principal contradictions in today’s world are those between the American people and American reactionaries, between Britain and the United States, and between China and the United States.20 It is interesting to note that, despite Mao’s and his comrades’ recognition of the sharp conflicts between the superpowers, they emphasized that the real thrust of the American–Soviet confrontation lay in competition over the intermediate zone, and the process and outcome of the competition would be decided by the struggles between the peoples of the intermediate zone and the reactionary U.S. ruling class, rather than between the capitalist America and socialist Soviet Union. It should be further noted that, as Mao and his comrades viewed it, since China occupied a crucial position in the intermediate zone, the development of the Chinese revolution would play a central role in defining the path or even determining the result of the global Cold War. The introduction of the intermediate zone theory was of critical importance in understanding the conceptual journey of Mao and the CCP leadership that would eventually lead them to adopt the Bandung discourse. There is no doubt that the intermediate zone theory mirrored the CCP’s commitment to transforming the existing international order by challenging the United States as a dominant Western imperialist power. It also demonstrated that the CCP’s external policies already possessed a very strong “lean-to-one-side” feature even

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before the PRC’s establishment.21 Yet, in a more fundamental sense, the intermediate zone theory revealed a powerful tendency toward Chinese ethnocentrism in Mao’s and the other CCP leaders’ definition of the postwar world situation. While Mao and his comrades contended that whether or not the United States would be able to control the intermediate zone would be determined by the result of the struggles between China and the United States, they virtually meant that the “principal contradiction” in the postwar world was of a Sino–American nature. This Chinese ethnocentrism, as discussed in this chapter, served as a crucial point of departure for Mao and his comrades to develop a China-centered vision of the “world revolution” by highlighting its connections with the worldwide process of decolonization in the CCP’s terms.

The Beijing-Moscow “Division of Labor” Agreement The victory of the Chinese communist revolution in 1949 allowed Mao and the CCP leadership to envision the missions of the “world revolution” by emphasizing the notion of an “Eastern revolution.” They believed that the Chinese revolution’s rural-oriented model should transcend China and be applied to other parts of the intermediate zone, serving as an example of universal significance to other “oppressed peoples.”22 Against this background, the Chinese and Soviet communists worked out a “division of labor” agreement on promoting revolutions in different parts of the world. In late June–August 1949, Liu Shaoqi, the CCP’s second in command, led a high-ranking visiting delegation to Moscow. This was an important event that the CCP leadership had planned since 1947. In order to prepare for discussions with Stalin and other Soviet leaders, the CCP leadership drafted a comprehensive report on the party’s policies toward important domestic and international issues for Liu to submit to Stalin.23 The basic tone of the report was extremely pro-Soviet. The report emphasized that the new China would “stand firmly on the side of the Soviet Union and other People’s Democratic Countries in international affairs against new dangers of war and for world peace and democracy.” In describing the CCP’s views of the world revolution and China’s position in it, the report stated that “the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is the headquarters of the world Communist movement, and the CCP is only the headquarters of one front of the movement. In accordance with the principle that the interests of a part must obey the interests of the whole, the CCP obeys the decisions of the Soviet party, despite that there now exist no such organization as the Comintern and the CCP is not a member of the Cominform by the parties in Europe.” The report even went so far as to claim that “on certain issues, if any difference in opinion ap-

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pears between the CCP and the Soviet Party, the CCP, after making explanation of its opinion, is prepared to obey as well as to implement the decisions of the Soviet Party.”24 While this pro-Soviet tone apparently reflected the CCP’s need to gain substantial support from the Soviet Union for China’s postvictory reconstruction (and this was a major goal of Liu’s visit), it was also compatible with Mao’s “lean-to-one-side” announcement, which the CCP chairman delivered at the time that Liu just arrived in Moscow.25 But the report was also aimed at deepening Stalin’s understanding of the essence and significance of the Chinese revolution. In describing the experience of the Chinese revolution, Liu emphasized the following: During the course of the Chinese revolution, the Chinese Communists have been successful in the following fields: the organization of the anti-imperialist national united front, introduction of land reform, adoption of the strategy of surrounding cities through prolonged armed struggle in the countryside and then seizing the cities, reliance on underground and legal activities in the cities as a supplementary tactic to the armed struggle in the rural areas, and construction of a Marxist-Leninist party in such a backward country like China. In all respects, the experience of the Chinese revolution may be of great utility to other colonial and semicolonial countries.26 Liu’s message obviously caught Stalin’s attention. At a meeting with Liu on July 27, the Soviet leader reportedly made a rare apology to the Chinese comrades for his “mistaken hindrance” to the Chinese revolution as the result of his “limited knowledge” about China; he also stressed that there were many things that the Soviets could learn from the CCP.27 This was Stalin’s gesture to show the Chinese of his willingness to acknowledge the uniqueness of the Chinese revolution experience. Within this context Stalin and Liu discussed the roles that the Soviet Union and the CCP should play in promoting communist revolutions in the world. At one point the Soviet leader mentioned that “the center of the (world) revolution has moved from the West to the East, and has now moved to China.”28 In further exchanges, Stalin reasoned that since the Chinese had greater influence in the colonial and semicolonial countries in the East, it would be easier for the CCP than the Soviets to help promote revolutions there. As a result of these discussions, Liu and Stalin reached a strategic “division of labor” agreement: While the Soviet Union would continuously play a leadership role in directing the world revolution and take the main responsibility in promoting revolutions

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in the West, the CCP would play a major role in promoting revolutions in the East.29 In retrospect, this “division of labor” agreement between the Soviet and Chinese communists had major political implications. The CCP’s implementation of this agreement resulted in China’s support to Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh in the war against the French colonists and, in October 1950, China’s military intervention in Korea. When policymakers in Washington gave more attention to the “threats” posed by revolutionary China, the Cold War in East Asia intensified. In a broader sense, the Sino–Soviet “division of labor” agreement laid the ideological foundation for the PRC to enter a strategic alliance with the Soviet Union in February 1950.30 More importantly, the agreement meant that Stalin had agreed that indeed there existed special connections between the world revolution and the decolonization trend in the non-Western world, and that China, because of the virtue of its own history and modern experience, occupied a more proper position than the Soviet Union in playing a major role in linking the world revolution with decolonization, especially in East Asia. This endorsement offered new legitimacy to the CCP’s endeavor to signify the experience of the Chinese revolution by emphasizing the universality involved in it for the “oppressed peoples” in other non-Western countries. It also confirmed to Mao and his comrades that the “revolutionariness” of the PRC’s foreign policy could and should be defined in ways that would more tightly link together the discourses of “revolution” and “decolonization.” Against this background Liu Shaoqi delivered his famous speech at the opening session of the Asian-Oceanic region unions in November 1949.31 Liu stated that the Chinese revolution was an integral part of the Moscow-led world revolution. He contended that the victory of the Chinese revolution greatly enhanced the world revolution by serving as a successful model for the national liberation movements in other colonial and semicolonial countries. He thus concluded that the path of the Chinese revolution was “the path that the people in many colonial and semi-colonial countries must adopt in order to pursue national independence and people’s democracy.”32 On the basis of the above discussions, Liu raised a bold yet crucial point: that the national liberation movements in the non-Western world could and should play a decisive role—more decisive than the role by the proletariats in industrial countries—in overturning the global reign of Western imperialist and colonial powers. Liu contended that more than half of the world’s population lived in the Asian-Oceanic region, and that the Western powers had based the construction of their own “civilization” as well as their reactionary rules at home upon the exploitation of the peoples in the colonies and semi-

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colonies in the East and other parts of the world. Consequently, the realization of national liberation of the colonies and semicolonies would not only result in the collapse of the worldwide domination of Western imperialism but also led to the emancipation of the peoples in Western powers themselves. Liu concluded that such was “the path that we must follow, so that the colonies and semicolonies will win liberation, and the laboring people in various imperialist countries will achieve emancipation.”33 Thus we see that by the time of the PRC’s establishment, Mao and the CCP leadership had come to a firm understanding of the profound connections between decolonization and revolution. Supporting this understanding was the CCP leadership’s determination to challenge the Western imperialist– dominated international system and institutions, as well as their confidence in the significance and universality of the experience of the Chinese revolution. Through the Beijing–Moscow “division of labor” agreement, Mao and his comrades not only won Stalin’s acceptance of the necessity and possibility of overthrowing capitalism’s global reign through promoting the process of decolonization but also made the Soviet leader endorse the new China’s crucial role in bridging decolonization and revolution. All of this formed the foundation on which the PRC appeared as a radical revolutionary country on the world scene.

China and the Korean and French-Indochina Wars In its first five years, the PRC persistently presented challenges to the United States and other Western powers. In accordance with Mao’s “lean-to-one-side” statement, the PRC signed with the Soviet Union a treaty of strategic alliance in February 1950. Eight months later, Mao and the Beijing leadership decided to send Chinese troops to Korea, entering a direct military confrontation with the United States that would last until July 1953.34 Beginning in the summer of 1950, Beijing dispatched military and political advisers to support the Vietnamese communists in a war against the French colonialists.35 With the PRC entering international affairs in such dramatic ways, East Asia was turned into a major battlefield of the Cold War. Underlying China’s intervention in Korea and involvement in Indochina were profound political, strategic, and ideological causes. Security and geopolitical concerns certainly played an important role. Korea and Vietnam are China’s neighbors; in history they once belonged to China’s spheres of influence. For Beijing’s leaders, allowing Korea and Vietnam to be controlled by hostile imperialist forces meant grave threats to China’s security interests. Yet Beijing’s leaders made the decisions on Korea and Indochina primarily for

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turning pressures created by external crises into the dynamics for enhancing the CCP’s control of China’s state and society. Indeed, China’s intervention in Korea and Vietnam represented a crucial step by Mao and his comrades to realize the universal value of the Chinese revolution, revealing their aspiration of reviving China’s central position in East Asian international affairs.36 By extensive use of China’s resources to support the revolutions in Korea (a former colony) and Indochina (still under France’s colonial rule), Mao and his comrades encountered two actual cases in which the themes of “revolution” and “decolonization” were intimately interwoven. China’s revolutionary foreign policies created great pressures for the Chinese communist state. The Korean War resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers, forced the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars on military purposes at the expense of China’s economic reconstruction, prevented the CCP from “liberating” Taiwan, and made Beijing, at least in the short term, more dependent on Moscow for military and other material support. China’s confrontation with America worsened, and the PRC was excluded from the United Nations, a status that would continue until the early 1970s. However, from Beijing’s perspective—and especially Mao’s—Chinese interventions in Korea and Indochina brought about considerable gains to the young communist regime. China’s war experience in Korea bolstered Mao’s plans for continuing the revolution at home after its nationwide victory. During the Korean War years, the communist regime found itself in a powerful position to penetrate into almost every area of Chinese society through intensive mass mobilization under the banner of revolutionary nationalism. Three nationwide campaigns swept through China’s countryside and cities: the movement to suppress counter-revolutionaries, land reform, and the “Three Antis” and “Five Antis” movements.37 When the war ended in July 1953, China’s society and political landscape had been altered: Organized resistance to the new regime had been destroyed; land in the countryside had been redistributed and the landlord class eliminated; the national bourgeoisie was under the tight control of the communist state, and the “petit-bourgeoisie” intellectuals experienced the first round of communist reeducation. Consequently, the CCP effectively deepened its organizational control of Chinese society and dramatically promoted its authority and legitimacy in the minds of the Chinese people. The Chinese experience in Korea and Indochina also greatly boosted the CCP’s status in the international communist movement. Mao and his comrades had greater confidence in proclaiming that the model of the Chinese revolution indeed was relevant to promoting revolutions in East Asia. From Beijing’s perspective, the cases of Korea and Indochina proved that “revolution” not

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only was closely related to the process of decolonization but also provided the most effective means to destroy the global reign of Western capitalism. In the Chinese-Soviet agreement of “division of labor” of summer 1949, the CCP remained a junior partner vis-à-vis Moscow in the grand design of promoting the world revolution. The Korea and Indochina cases highlighted the significance of the “revolutions in the East,” thus strengthening the subtle yet persistent sense of superiority on the part of Mao and his fellow CCP leaders—a development that became more obvious after the death of Stalin in March 1953. Mao’s China was a revolutionary country, but Mao and his fellow CCP leaders were willing to adjust their strategies and policies in accordance with the changing situations they were facing. During the Korean War, Mao and the Beijing leadership repeatedly adjusted China’s war aims. Early in the war, Mao and his comrades had hoped that China’s intervention would lead to a glorious victory over the “U.S. imperialists and their lackeys.” However, the cruel reality on the battlefield (that the communist forces lacked air support and reliable logistical supply) forced the CCP leaders to tailor China’s war aims in accordance with its limited war capacities.38 In Vietnam, China provided substantial support to the Viet Minh from 1950 to 1954, but when the Vietnamese communists asked Beijing to send Chinese troops to participate in the Viet Minh’s military operations, Beijing’s leaders refused, mainly to avoid overextension of China’s international commitments.39 While adhering to their revolutionary principles, Beijing’s leaders also demonstrated a degree of flexibility in managing the Korea and Indochina crises. As it later turned out, this flexibility was of critical importance for Beijing to have dialogues with nonWestern countries and some capitalist countries while, at the same time, remaining a “revolutionary country.” When the Korean War ended in 1953 and the Indochina War reached its final stage in 1954, Beijing’s leaders encountered a critical juncture in devising domestic and international policies and strategies in light of their experience in Korea and Indochina. The key issue, as the CCP leaders perceived it, was how to bring China’s “revolution after revolution” to new heights at home. Mao and his comrades would have to devote more attention and resources to promoting the “socialist revolution and reconstruction” domestically, yet continuously upgrading China’s international status was also highly relevant, especially as Mao and the CCP leadership understood that by responding to the Chinese people’s “victim mentality,”40 they could turn China’s international gains into a powerful source of domestic mobilization. Against this background, China dispatched a delegation to attend the Geneva peace conference in 1954.

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Geneva as a Turning Point The Geneva conference in 1954 brought the PRC into a new arena of international diplomacy. Beijing’s experience at the conference forced Chinese leaders to revisit their perceptions of and attitudes toward countries in the intermediate zone, thus leading to subtle yet significant changes in Beijing’s ways of challenging the existing international system. Central in the background of the Geneva conference was the major powers’ needs for making peace after the wars in Korea and Indochina. On September 29, 1953, Moscow—now post-Stalin—proposed a five-power foreign ministers’ meeting including representatives from the PRC to examine “measures of relaxing international tension.” Beijing quickly expressed full support of the proposal. From late January to early February 1954, foreign ministers from the Soviet Union, the United States, Britain, and France met in Berlin, and they agreed to convene a conference in Geneva to discuss issues related to “reaching a peaceful settlement of the Korea question” and “restoring peace in Indochina.” The four powers and China, as well as other stakeholder countries, would attend the conference.41 Beijing’s leaders regarded the Berlin conference as a big “international victory” for the Socialist camp in general and the PRC in particular, and quickly decided that China would attend the Geneva conference. Underlying the decision were a series of domestic and international considerations. First and foremost, Mao and his fellow CCP leaders foresaw that China’s presence at Geneva would highlight the fact that the new China, after being excluded from the international community since its establishment, had indeed emerged as a major world power.42 This was particularly important for them largely because of crucial domestic considerations. Ever since the birth of the PRC, “We the Chinese people have stood up”—the announcement that Mao made at the PRC’s formation—had played a central role in legitimizing the revolutionary programs that Mao tried to carry out in China. In 1954–1955, when Mao and his comrades were contemplating introducing the first five-year plan, as well as shifting China’s resources to the “liberation” of Nationalist-controlled Taiwan, they fully understood that if they were able to present a strong case of advancement in the PRC’s international status to ordinary Chinese—who, informed by their own unique “victim mentality,” had been so prone to the revival of China’s central position in the world—they would be more capable of promoting the Party’s mass mobilization plans at home. Underlying Beijing’s decision to attend the Geneva conference were also practical political and security considerations. When the Korean War ended, many leaders in Beijing felt that at least for the moment, a more peaceful out-

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side environment was necessary to promote China’s “socialist transformation and reconstruction.” This did not mean that China would stop supporting revolutions abroad, but rather to create better conditions for China to serve as a support base for the world revolution.43 On the Indochina issue, Beijing’s leaders saw the prospect of America’s direct military intervention there as a major potential threat. Consequently, they were willing to prevent U.S. intervention through a diplomatic settlement at Geneva.44 This period marked the heyday of the Sino–Soviet alliance. In preparing for the Geneva conference, Beijing’s leaders placed great emphasis on constructing a joint Chinese–Soviet strategy. From a historical perspective, this effort represented also an outgrowth of the Beijing–Moscow “division of labor” agreement that the two sides had reached five years before. In the first three weeks of April, Zhou twice visited Moscow to discuss the Chinese–Soviet strategy at Geneva. These discussions resulted in a consensus between Beijing and Moscow: Although Washington would do everything possible to sabotage the conference, the communist side should try its best to pursue a peaceful solution in Indochina.45 There existed, however, important differences between the Chinese-Soviet “division of labor” agreement of 1949 and their consensus on the Geneva conference. As clearly defined in the 1949 agreement, Beijing would play a major role in promoting revolutions in the East under the condition that Moscow would remain commander-in-chief of the global revolution. In the 1954 consensus, Beijing had already achieved equal status (or even a self-perceived status of superiority) vis-à-vis Moscow. Second, the 1949 agreement was largely based on the assumption that revolutions in the West were at least as important as revolutions in the East. In comparison, the 1954 consensus placed greater emphasis on maintaining and enhancing the momentum of the “Eastern revolution,” which was supported by the vision that East Asia represented one of the weakest linkages in the chain of international imperialism/colonialism. As Geneva would become the PRC’s diplomatic debut, the Chinese inevitably would have to deal with delegates from various countries. Beijing’s leaders felt compelled to come up with a more comprehensive understanding of international politics, especially those conducted by the big powers. In this respect, they were informed by the united front approach—one that contained methods and strategies about the necessity and possibility of identifying and isolating the most dangerous enemy—that the CCP had so successfully developed in carrying out revolutions at home. In developing China’s strategies at Geneva, the leadership thus paid special attention to the differences among Western countries and how the communist side might take advantage of these differences. Zhou and his colleagues found that “the opinions of the United

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States, Britain and France are far from identical on Korea and many other international issues; indeed, the contradictions among them sometimes are very big.” All of this, as Zhou and his colleagues viewed it, had created opportunities for the PRC to “increase difficulties” for its enemies and to “strengthen its diplomatic activities and international position.”46 In retrospect, this new understanding of the differences among Western countries created the much needed space for Zhou to act in sophisticated and flexible ways toward non-communist participants in Geneva. At the conference, Zhou actively pursued all kinds of working relationships with the leaders from Britain and France, including Anthony Eden, Georges Bidault, and Pierre Mendès-France.47 These activities were crucial for the Geneva conference to reach a breakthrough on the Indochina issue; they also widened the horizons of Beijing’s international visions and activities. As the conference went on, Zhou found himself facing challenges of how to deal with representatives from such nationalist countries as Laos and Cambodia. In preconference exchanges among the Viet Minh, Beijing, and Moscow, the Vietnamese persistently stated that Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia were all integral parts of the “Indochina Revolution.” They thus argued that Laotian and Cambodian problems must be resolved as part of a general settlement on Indochina by recognizing the “resistance forces” in Laos and Cambodia.48 Zhou, without sufficient knowledge of Indochina’s history and political situation and bound by the desire to enhance Chinese–Vietnamese solidarity, endorsed this Viet Minh stand.49 Zhou’s views on this issue, however, changed significantly during the conference, especially when he found that the Viet Minh’s unyielding attitudes toward Laos and Cambodia blocked the conference from making progress toward a settlement on Indochina. In order to find ways to prevent the conference’s total failure, Zhou took the initiative to meet with the representatives of the Laotian and Cambodian royal governments, spending much time on learning about the actual situations in Laos and Cambodia. He realized that big differences existed between Vietnam and the two other countries in that “the national and state boundaries between the three associate countries in Indochina are quite distinctive.” Furthermore, he learned that indigenous communist forces were weak in Laos and Cambodia, and that “the royal governments in these two countries are regarded as the legitimate governments by the overwhelming majority of their people.” The identity of the Laotian and Cambodian royal governments in Beijing’s overall analysis of Indochina’s political scenario thus changed subtly. Toward the end of the conference, Zhou told the Laotian and Cambodian representatives that the PRC was not their enemy but, rather, could become their friend.50

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As far as its immediate impact is concerned, Beijing’s new understanding of the situations in Laos and Cambodia led to one of the most important shifts in the Chinese–Soviet–Viet Minh strategies toward the Indochina issue at Geneva. Starting in mid-June, Zhou cooperated with the Soviets to form and implement a new strategy toward Indochina. In this view, Vietnam would be divided into two “concentration zones” for the two contending sides, and Laos and Cambodia would be treated as two independent political entities in the general settlement for Indochina. Accordingly, the Chinese and Soviets pushed their Vietnamese comrades to accept a new line in favor of withdrawal of all foreign forces from Laos and Cambodia, including the Viet Minh “volunteers.”51 Largely because of Beijing’s and Moscow’s success in persuading the Vietnamese communists to accept this new strategy, the Geneva conference reached a settlement on Indochina on July 20, 1954.52 In a deeper and broader sense, experiences like the Geneva conference also induced Beijing’s leaders to develop a series of “new thoughts” about how to expand the PRC’s international influence and upgrade its international status through developing new and stronger ties with non-Western countries. From Beijing’s perspective, such a new line would contribute in one way or another to destroying the global reign of Western colonialism; therefore, it was by no means a compromise of the new China’s revolutionary principles. This was exactly what Zhou tried to convey to Ho Chi Minh at an important meeting in Liuzhou in early July. The Chinese premier emphasized that there existed “no contradictions” between “trying to neutralize or even unite with the nationalist forces” and thus settling the Indochina issue peacefully and “fulfilling the mission of the international communist movement.”53 What Zhou and the CCP leadership had learned in Geneva opened the door leading to a major shift in Beijing’s general attitudes toward non-Western countries in international politics. During an interval at the Geneva conference in late June, Zhou visited India and Burma. In New Delhi, Zhou and Nehru touched upon a wide range of issues. In addition to Indochina, Zhou and Nehru discussed the necessity and possibility of establishing a “peace zone” in East and South Asia. Zhou favored the idea, emphasizing that although China and India had different political and social systems, they had similar historical and modern experiences—both had glorious cultures and histories, both had suffered from the oppression of Western colonialism, and both had achieved independence or liberation from Western powers. Therefore, the relationship between China and India should be established on the basis of the principles of peaceful coexistence. Zhou particularly stressed that this relationship might also serve as the model for relations between other Asian countries. In order to convince Nehru that China was sincere in pursuing “peaceful coexistence,”

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Zhou told him that although he believed in revolution, he also believed that revolution could not be exported from one country to another. “If the people favor one system, it is useless to try to overthrow it; and if the people oppose one system, it is useless to try to defend it.”54 Toward the end of Zhou’s visit, he and Nehru signed a joint Chinese–India statement, in which the two premiers emphasized that the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence should serve as the foundation of relations among all countries, as well as the foundation of international relations in a general sense. Then, Zhou visited Burma and signed a similar statement with Burmese Prime Minister U Nu. What would later be known as the textual core of the “Bandung discourse” in China’s external relations came into being. For the Chinese leaders, the most important significance of these statements was that they represented a series of new basic codes in conducting international affairs and politics that were fundamentally different from the dominant codes and norms created by Western powers. The reality that the new China was the initiator of these principles, as Beijing’s leaders viewed it, would further justify its claim to China’s centrality in international relations. Zhou acted almost immediately to use the new language of peaceful coexistence to promote China’s ideas and international status. In the later stage of the Geneva conference, Zhou repeatedly used a new concept—“new Southeast Asia–type countries”—in describing and defining the kind of nation-states that China and the Socialist camp should support. In Zhou’s telegrams to Beijing, he defined such countries as those that, on the one hand, would not attach themselves to any military alliances formed by Western powers and, on the other, would persist in the process of pursuing national liberation and independence. The models of the new Southeast Asia type–countries, according to Zhou, were India and Burma. Zhou believed that it was possible—and even desirable—for the PRC and the socialist camp to develop good relations with these countries.55 In meetings with representatives of the royal governments of Laos and Cambodia at Geneva, Zhou advised them that it would be in their countries’ best interests to become the “new” type.56 That the “new Southeast Asia country” concept was created and used at the Geneva conference reflected, from another angle, Zhou’s and the Beijing leadership’s efforts to develop a new theoretical understanding of the broader meanings of the Chinese experience. The absence of class struggle in the concept clearly indicated Zhou’s awareness of the East-West-confrontation– centered Cold War discourse’s limits both in narrating the complexity of international affairs in the changing Cold War world and in illustrating and defining the ideological, strategic, and political missions of the PRC’s international policies. By creating the new concept, Zhou apparently meant to bring about

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fresh theoretical space that would allow the PRC to adhere to the revolutionariness of its international policies while, at the same time, permitting it to explore ways to best serve the new China’s presence on the world scene. Probably because of its ambiguity, Beijing stopped using the concept “new Southeast Asia–type countries” after the Geneva conference. Yet the basic ideas of this concept were retained in Beijing’s strategic thinking, forming a point of departure for the more refined Bandung discourse in the PRC’s international policies.

Mao’s New “Intermediate Zone” Thesis and the Shaping of the Bandung Discourse China’s presence at Geneva set up a larger and more significant stage for its diplomatic activities, which, as a senior Chinese diplomat put it, “established the new China’s unchallengeable position as one of the Five Powers while, at the same time, greatly expanding its influences in politics, diplomacy, economic affairs, and culture.”57 From Mao’s perspective, though, China’s biggest gain from attending the conference was not in the diplomatic field but in domestic areas as it offered a powerful and convincing case to enhance the legitimacy of the CCP’s plans for social transformation. In the second half of 1954, the delegation of the British Labour Party, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev (as well as leaders from other communist countries), Indian Prime Minister Nehru, and Burmese Prime Minister U Nu, among others, visited China. All of this allowed the CCP to tell the Chinese people that both China’s friends and enemies had recognized—in different ways—that indeed “the Chinese people have stood up.” In the wake of Geneva, the Chinese leaders announced on several occasions that the PRC’s diplomacy was based on the Five Principles and, therefore, was a “diplomacy of peace.” However, when Beijing was going all out to promote the Five Principles, new tensions emerged in the Taiwan Straits, and China and the United States were brought to the verge of another direct military confrontation only a few months after the conclusion of the Geneva conference. In late July, almost immediately after Geneva, Mao dispatched a telegram to Zhou, who was still traveling in Eastern Europe, sternly criticizing the premier’s “mistake of failing to raise the Taiwan issue” before and during the Geneva conference.58 On July 23, the Renmin Ribao (People’s Daily) published an editorial essay, emphasizing that “we the Chinese people must liberate Taiwan.” The Taiwan issue thus entered the center of the chessboard of international confrontation.

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In the ensuing months, the Taiwan Strait was the site of an international crisis. In order to demonstrate that Beijing was determined to “liberate Taiwan,” Beijing’s leaders ordered the PLA to shell the Nationalist-controlled Jinmen (Quemoy) islands in early September 1954. Meanwhile, for purposes of coping with the serious threats that the Nationalists had presented to the safety of such major mainland ports as Shanghai and the maritime transportation routes off East China coasts, the PLA made preparations to attack and occupy Nationalist-controlled Yijiangshan and Dachen islands off Zhejiang province. In response to the escalating tension in the Taiwan Straits, Washington began talks with the Nationalists toward signing a treaty of mutual defense. In order to deter and penalize the discussions between Washington and Taipei, Beijing announced in November to sentence eleven Americans, who were captured and imprisoned during the Korean War after their airplane carrying out reconnaissance tasks over Chinese territory was shot down. On December 5, Washington and Taipei formally signed the treaty of mutual defense. In internal discussions, policymakers and military planners in Washington even considered the possibility of using nuclear weapons to manage the Taiwan crisis. Before the U.S. Congress rectified the U.S.–Taiwan treaty, the Chinese acted to carry out large-scale amphibious landing operations on Yijiangshan in January 1955. At first glance, it seems odd that the Chinese leaders, while loudly advocating the Five Principles, initiated the Taiwan Strait crisis. One may argue that this was not contradictory as the Five Principles dealt with state-to-state relations, and the Taiwan issue, from Beijing’s perspective, was a domestic one. However, since the U.S. Seventh Fleet had entered the Taiwan Strait ever since the outbreak of the Korean War, which had already internationalized the Taiwan question, Mao and his comrades clearly knew that by shelling Jinmen and attacking Yijiangshan they would trigger confrontation between China and the United States, as well as widespread tension in East Asia. So what is revealed here is that Beijing’s advocacy of the Five Principles did not change Beijing’s basic ways of coping with imperialism in general and U.S. imperialism in particular. As far as the motives underlying Mao’s and the Chinese leadership’s management of the Taiwan crisis are concerned, two points should be emphasized here. First, profound domestic reasons inspired Beijing’s decision to use radical means to place the Taiwan issue on the chessboard of international confrontation. In China’s domestic developments, 1954–1955 represented a crucial turning point. With the introduction of the first five-year plan and plans to collectivize China’s rural communities, Mao and the CCP leadership were eager to build the foundation of a socialist society in China. In search for means

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to mobilize ordinary Chinese people for this new stage of Mao’s “revolution after revolution,” Mao, informed by his Korean War experience, sensed that by emphasizing ongoing external threats would help create a powerful wellspring for domestic mobilization. Mao emphasized the same in late July 1954: Now in front of us is a war, namely, the war against the Jiang Jieshi bandit clique in Taiwan. We are therefore facing the task of liberating Taiwan. To highlight this task is not only for the purpose of breaking up the military treaty between America and Jiang; it is also, and more importantly, for the purpose of raising up the political consciousness and political alertness of the people of the whole country, so that the people’s revolutionary enthusiasm will be stirred up, thus promoting fulfilling the task of socialist reconstruction.59 Beijing’s management of the Taiwan Strait crisis also revealed that the Five Principles did not comprise the entire foundation of China’s international policies, and these principles did not necessarily apply to China’s relations with the United States. In conversations with the British Labour Party delegation, and Nehru and U Nu, Mao said that “it is possible for countries with different social systems to coexist peacefully,” and that he was willing to improve relations with the United States.60 These statements, however, revealed Mao’s intention to use the united front strategies that he had learned to master for winning over centrist elements and isolating the principal enemies in the Chinese civil war. In a series of inter-Party meetings, Mao stressed that “we should unite with all of those who are in favor of peace, so as to isolate those warlikes, namely, to isolate the American authorities.”61 In a meeting with Harry Pollitt, chair of the British Communist Party, Mao explained that Beijing had been working on countries in Asia and Africa, so that they would be turned into allies in anti-imperialism and anticolonialism struggles, and that “in the end the United States will certainly be isolated.”62 Even when Mao said that Beijing was in favor of relaxing international tension, and that China’s reconstruction required an international environment of peace and stability, a deep and consistent belief on his part remained that revolution would never emerge in peaceful settings. In a conversation with Nehru, for example, Mao raised a question and then answered it: “Is it more advantageous to make people feel safe, or is it more advantageous to make them live in tension everyday? A situation of tension will help awaken the people, and will make them prepare to resist pressure. That is conducive to revolution.”63 It certainly is revealing to see that even at the time that China became the initiator and advocate of the Five Principles, Mao did not—and never meant to— abandon his fundamental belief on how revolution should be made.

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Mao’s basic understanding of the international situation after Geneva was most clearly revealed in his renewed interest in the “intermediate zone” concept. Beginning in July 1954, almost ten years after the concept’s initial introduction, Mao again used “intermediate zone” in illuminating and defining the international structure and situation. In early July, he pointed out at a CCP Politburo meeting that the capitalist world was, indeed, divided. “The biggest ambition of the United States at the moment is to castigate the intermediate zone, including the entire area from Japan to Britain, and to make all these countries cry while castigating them.”64 In August 1954, in a conversation with the British Labour Party delegation, Mao used the “intermediate zone” concept to describe the position of such capitalist countries as Britain, which was sandwiched on the one side by the Soviet Union and China and, on the other, by the United States: So-called anti-communism is not an entirely true thing. In my opinion, the United States is using anti-communism as a pretext to serve its other purposes. First of all, it is for the purpose of occupying the intermediate zone stretching from Japan to Britain. The United States is situated in North America, on one side of this intermediate zone, and the Soviet Union and China are on the other side of the zone. The objective of the United States is to occupy the countries in this vast intermediate zone, so as to bully them, to control their economies, to establish military bases on their territory, and to see to it that they are increasingly weakened, and Japan and Germany included.65 Although neither Mao nor Zhou directly used the term “intermediate zone” in their conversations with Nehru and U Nu, they treated India and Burma as belonging to the intermediate zone. Meanwhile, Mao and Zhou also repeatedly emphasized that both China and these countries belonged to “Eastern countries,” and both shared similar cultural and historical traditions as well as humiliation in modern times at the hands of Western powers. In these narratives, such capitalist countries as Britain, France, and Japan, which were part of the broader “intermediate zone” according to Mao’s definition, were often listed together with the United States and became countries that “followed the United States” and represented the worldwide forces of imperialism and colonialism.66 If we compare Mao’s “intermediate zone” concept of the mid-1950s and that of the late 1940s, there are at least two apparent differences. First, in the late 1940s, Mao regarded the areas between the United States and the Soviet Union in Asia, Africa, and Europe as belonging to one vast intermediate zone without making further distinctions. In comparison, when Mao reintroduced the

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concept in the mid-1950s, he already demonstrated some traits of what would later be known as his “two intermediate zones” idea: While treating the nationalist countries that were then completing the process of decolonization in Asia and Africa as the zone’s main components, he included such capitalist countries as Britain and Japan as unique parts of a broad intermediate zone. In Mao’s views, in dealing with the intermediate zone members that had been colonies and semicolonies of Western powers, it was important to go beyond neutralizing them in international politics to push them toward supporting or even participating in revolutions against the capitalist West, thus making them a part of the world revolution. In dealing with such capitalist countries as Britain, the socialist countries should try to neutralize them in the Cold War environment.67 Second, compared with the “intermediate zone” ideas of the late 1940s, Mao’s reintroduction of the concept was accompanied by a much stronger desire for Beijing to play a central role in international affairs. As discussed earlier, Mao’s intermediate zone thesis of the late 1940s was with a tendency toward “leaning to one side,” and, in spite of Mao’s China-centered ambition, the CCP was then the “younger brother” of the Soviets, and the world revolution was with Moscow as its indisputable center. By the mid-1950s, both China and the world had changed profoundly. The PRC’s experiences during the Korean War and at the Geneva conference made Mao and his comrades more convinced than ever before that the Chinese revolution indeed had universal significance. This confidence, combined with the emerging leadership vacuum in the international communist movement after Stalin’s death, greatly enhanced Mao’s belief that Beijing was the only qualified candidate for the top leadership role in the global revolution. For Mao and his comrades, it was the new China’s overall capacity of revolutionizing the worldwide process of decolonization—a capacity that was not possessed by Moscow—that had enabled Beijing’s centrality in the world revolution. All of this shaped the context in which China attended the Bandung conference and the Bandung discourse entered Beijing’s representation of China’s international policies. The idea of this conference was first introduced in AprilMay 1954, at a meeting by the leaders from Burma, Ceylon, India, Indonesia, and Pakistan. When the idea was transformed into plans, whether or not the PRC should be invited to attend the conference caused serious differences among several Asian countries. Beijing’s leaders understood that given China’s potential influence among non-Western countries, its presence at the conference alone would place it at the spotlight and make it a central actor. Therefore, in meeting with Nehru and U Nu in June 1954, Zhou expressed Beijing’s endorsement of the conference and China’s intention to attend.68

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Beijing’s leaders quickly formed a special task force to plan for the conference. In the “Plans to Participating in the Asian-African Conference,” which Zhou personally revised and approved, the conference was defined as one “not attended by Western imperialist countries, but held by the majority of countries in Asia and Africa.” The plan pointed out that the conference occurred in the context that “the struggles by peoples in Asia and Africa for national independence are rapidly developing,” and that its participants included “such socialist countries as the PRC and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, as well as many countries in favor of peaceful neutrality.” The plan thus elaborated that China’s presence at the conference would “create favorable conditions for expanding the forces for peace in Asia and Africa, as well as in the entire world.” According to the plan, China’s basic principles at the conference should be “to strive for expanding the united front for world peace, promoting national independence movements, and creating conditions for establishing and enhancing our country’s ties and diplomatic relations with various Asian and African countries.”69 In accordance with these principles, the PRC delegation headed by Zhou decided that it would treat Beijing’s attendance at the conference as itself a great victory of the new China’s diplomacy, and would avoid making any radical statements at the conference. Instead of “discussing the question of communism,” the Chinese delegation would emphasize that China shared history, culture, and the modern experience of suffering from imperialist and colonialist aggressions with other Asian and African countries, so as to ensure that the conference would be successful.70 The Nationalist regime in Taiwan understood that the appearance of the PRC delegation at the conference would be considered a major success for Beijing, and it was also worried that the balance between Beijing and Taipei in their competition for international recognition was to be changed. Consequently, Taiwan’s intelligence services planned and carried out one of the most serious assassination plots during the Cold War era, targeting Zhou. For reasons not yet completely clear, Zhou escaped the assassination attempt, and traveled to Indonesia safely.71 The basic tone of the Chinese delegation at Bandung had been set in advance, but Zhou’s personal charisma and diplomatic skills refined the tone. Zhou carefully avoided using ideological languages in describing China’s domestic and international policies. At private meetings, he repeatedly stressed that Beijing favored peace, and that China would not export revolution to other countries. In public presentations, he carefully avoided any direct conflict with dissenting voices, creating a public image that he was the person most eager for the conference’s success. On April 19, when Zhou was scheduled to deliver

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the main speech at the conference’s plenary session, he sensed a tense atmosphere prevailing in the conference hall due to participants’ deep suspicion of Beijing’s motives. He decided to distribute his speech notes among participants and to prepare another speech placing greater emphasis on the PRC delegation’s desire to “seek common grounds in spite of differences.” Zhou made the following statement: The Chinese delegation has come here to seek common ground, not to create division. Is there any reason to believe that there is common ground among us? Yes, there is. In modern history the overwhelming majority of Asian and African countries have suffered and are still suffering from the calamities caused by colonialism. . . . We have to admit that among our Asian and African countries, we do have different ideologies and different social systems. But this should not prevent us from seeking common ground and being united. Many independent countries have appeared since World War II. One group consists of countries led by Communist Parties and the other of countries led by nationalists. . . . Both of these groups have freed themselves from colonial rule and are continuing their struggle for complete independence. Is there any reason why we cannot understand and respect each other and give each other support and sympathy? There is every reason to make the Five Principles the basis for establishing friendship, cooperation and good-neighbor relations among us.72 Almost all of Zhou’s biographers and students of Chinese diplomatic history agree that this was one of the most important and successful speeches that Zhou had ever made. This speech offered a central text for the Bandung discourse in Chinese diplomacy. The speech, first and foremost, delivered a crucial statement concerning China’s self-perception in a changing world. Zhou made it clear that China, on the grand scale of historical developments, was one of the Asian and African countries standing on the opposite side of the global reign of imperialism and colonialism. Although Zhou did not use revolutionary terms to fashion the speech, the context in which the speech was made already attached to it a profound revolutionariness: indeed, the central message that Zhou delivered was that, by introducing a new set of international norms and codes of behavior legitimized by China’s shared experiences with other Asian and African countries, Beijing entitled itself to present a fundamental challenge to the existing international system and order controlled by Western imperialist and colonial powers. Thus on the afternoon of April 19, 1955, when Zhou gave up a nap and prepared the speech, he thoroughly illu-

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minated and annotated the basic ideas contained in Mao’s new “intermediate zone” statement. Applying the “Bandung Discourse”: Beijing’s Split with Moscow and Continuous Confrontation with Washington In the wake of the Asian–African conference, the “Bandung discourse” entered the mainstream representation system of China’s international policies. As far as its effect is concerned, the discourse did not reduce confrontation between China and the United States, and it created new complications in the relationships between Beijing and Moscow. Consequently, it enhanced China’s identity as a revolutionary country while, at the same time, leading to subtle changes in the dominant themes of the global Cold War. After the Geneva conference, China and the United States carried out consular-level talks in Geneva. With Zhou announcing at Bandung that China was willing to sit down and negotiate with the United States, the Chinese– American ambassadorial talks began. However, due to all manner of obstacles, the talks did not achieve any substantive progress, except for reaching a mutual agreement on retrieving and returning students and civilians to their own countries. By the end of 1957, with the departure of the U.S. ambassador, the talks were interrupted. In 1958, along with the radicalization of China’s political and social life accompanying the rise of the Great Leap Forward, Beijing, both in practice and in representation, even abandoned the “moderate” tone in its foreign policy. In late August 1958, when the Great Leap reached its peak, Mao ordered the PLA to shell the Nationalist-controlled Jinmen islands. In response, Washington dispatched the Seventh Fleet to escort the Nationalist supply convoys. Top U.S. policymakers and military planners discussed the possibility of using nuclear weapons as a means to cope with the crisis if it went out of control. China and the United States were once again brought to the verge of a direct military confrontation. Mao argued in the Chinese leadership’s internal discussions that the tension emerging in the Taiwan Straits would offer the CCP much needed means to justify the unprecedented mass mobilization for the Great Leap: Besides its disadvantageous side, a tense (international) situation can mobilize the population, can particularly mobilize the backward people, can mobilize the people in the middle, and can therefore promote the Great Leap Forward in economic construction. . . . Although there is no war right now, a tense situation caused by the current military confrontation can also bring . . . every positive factor into play.73

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In the meantime, however, Mao ordered the PLA not to fire on American vessels and agreed to resume the Chinese–American ambassadorial talks in Warsaw, so that the crisis situation would not spin out of control. In early October 1958, Mao suddenly ordered a stop to the shelling of Jinmen, announcing that Taiwan had become a “noose” on the neck of the U.S. imperialists. All of this led to the end of the Taiwan Strait crisis, but the overall confrontation between Beijing and Washington continued, and the Chinese-American ambassadorial talks became a symbolic forum for each side to issue stern criticism of the other. The revolutionariness of the “Bandung discourse” was also demonstrated in the subtle changes in Beijing’s relations with Moscow. After Bandung, when it became clear that the Beijing and Moscow held different views concerning how peaceful coexistence should be pursued in the Cold War environment, the hidden differences between Chinese and Soviet leaders in defining “revolution” and in comprehending the relationship between “revolution” and “decolonization” began to surface. Since the PRC’s establishment, Beijing’s strategic alliance with Moscow had served as a cornerstone of Chinese foreign policy. Although the “intermediate zone” thesis that Mao introduced in the late 1940s contained elements incompatible with Stalin’s analysis of the postwar international structure, they were overshadowed by the thesis’s “leaning to one side” tendency. The Soviet Party’s Twentieth Congress and the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization campaign, while causing great turmoil within the international communist movement, complicated the relationship between Beijing and Moscow. Mao criticized Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization, claiming that it not only “exposed the problems” (jie le gaizi) but also “made a mess” (tong le louzi).74 The Polish and Hungarian crises of 1956 provided Mao and the CCP leadership with a major opportunity to apply the “Bandung discourse” to relations among socialist countries. For Mao and his CCP comrades, the crises emerging in Poland and Hungary were not of the same nature: They saw the crisis in Poland as basically anti-Soviet and the one in Hungary as essentially anticommunist. In the meantime, they believed that both crises originated in Moscow’s “big-power chauvinism.” When the Soviet leaders informed the Chinese on October 19–20 that the situation in Poland had been highly unstable and that Moscow was preparing to intervene militarily, Mao, almost intuitively, told Pavel Yudin, Soviet ambassador to China, that if the Soviets indeed used military means to cope with the Poles, Beijing would regard it as naked interference with Poland’s internal affairs. Mao thus asked Yudin to convey an urgent message to Moscow: If the Soviets dispatch troops to solve the Polish crisis, China would use the most severe language to protest publicly.75

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On October 23–31, a top-level CCP delegation led by Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping visited Moscow to discuss with the Soviet leaders about how to cope with the Polish and the Hungarian crises. The meetings of the two sides covered matters on two fronts. For purposes of managing the crisis situation, the two sides exchanged intelligence information and consulted with each other on strategies and policies. Although the two sides were not always identical in opinions, they finally agreed to resolve the Polish crisis through discussion and consultation, and to settle the Hungarian crisis by using the Soviet Red Army to suppress the “reactionary rioters.”76 In exploring the origins of the crises and identifying ways to prevent similar crises from happening in the future, Liu and Deng led the discussion toward reassessing the negative impact of “big-power chauvinism” as a legacy of the Stalin era. Liu emphasized that, while it was unwise to try to abandon the banner of Stalin, it was necessary to criticize Stalin’s big-power chauvinism. In particular, he pointed out that the tensions between the Soviet Union and Poland, Hungary, and other East European countries had been caused by Stalin’s and the Soviet leadership’s practice of imposing their will on the leaders of these countries.77 Against this background, Liu introduced to Khrushchev “a big suggestion” from Mao concerning how to bring about a fundamental solution to the tensions between Moscow and East European countries: “It is our hope that the Soviet Union may treat other socialist countries with a sense of equality, allowing these countries to be independent and self-reliant.” Liu also told the Soviet leaders that Mao believed that “the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence can and should also be carried out between socialist countries.” Liu thus proposed that Moscow should issue a statement, declaring that all socialist countries were equals. Khrushchev and his comrades were reluctant to make such a declaration at first. However, facing repeated exhortations by Liu—and knowing that they were particularly in need of Beijing’s support at the moment—the Soviet leaders finally conceded.78 On October 30, the Soviet government formally issued the “Declaration on Developing and Enhancing the Friendship and Cooperation between the Soviet Union and other Socialist Countries,” in which Moscow promised to base the Soviet Union’s relations with other socialist countries on the Five Principles. In Liu’s and Deng’s discussions with the Soviet leaders, they repeatedly emphasized that the Soviet Union should remain the “center” of the international communist movement. However, when they criticized the Soviet Union’s bigpower chauvinism and insisted that the Five Principles should guide relations among socialist countries, they already demonstrated a strong sense of moral

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and political superiority vis-à-vis the Soviet leaders—indeed, what was implied here was that the legitimacy of Moscow’s “central” position in the international communist movement should rely on Beijing’s support and recognition. In retrospect, this probably was exactly why Mao and the CCP leadership brought the Bandung discourse into the international communist movement. After the Polish and Hungarian crises, Beijing and Moscow found that they disagreed on whether “peaceful coexistence” should be guiding socialist countries’ relationships with capitalist countries, including the United States. When Khrushchev initiated the de-Stalinization campaign, he also introduced the notion that it was possible for socialist countries to have “peaceful competition” with capitalist countries. Mao disagreed from the beginning. However, given that Beijing was then publicly exhorting the value of the Five Principles and that Beijing’s overall relations with Moscow remained amicable, Mao and his comrades did not criticize Khrushchev on this matter. In November 1957, Mao visited Moscow during celebrations of the fortieth anniversary of the Russian Bolshevik Revolution. In a style that Mao had been accustomed to at the CCP’s intra-party meetings, he gave a lengthy speech without written notes at a meeting attended by leaders of communist and workers’ parties from socialist countries. In discussing the question of peace and war, Mao argued that it was neither possible nor desirable to pursue peaceful coexistence with the imperialist countries. Touching on the question of nuclear warfare, Mao stressed that the communists should not be frightened by such a war started by the imperialists but, rather, should know that such a war, although carrying a high price, would bring the imperialist system to its grave.79 Khrushchev and his colleagues immediately interpreted Mao’s statement as a deliberate challenge to Khrushchev’s emphasis on “peaceful competition” with Western imperialist countries. After Mao returned to Beijing, he further criticized Moscow’s attempt to pursue “peaceful coexistence” with the United States and other Western imperialist and colonialist countries. He pointed out that differences already had emerged between Beijing and Moscow on the question concerning war and peace after the Twentieth Congress, and that the differences had since become wider and deeper. He reasoned that while taking the Five Principles as general guidelines in international relations was not erroneous, it was a mistake for the communist parties to use these principles for directing all aspects of their international policies. This, according to the chairman, was not only because such imperialist countries as the United States would be unwilling to abide by the Five Principles, but also because socialist countries should support the world revolution as well as the national liberation movement in colonies and semicolonies. “All in all,” contended Mao, “as this is a question concerning prole-

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tarian internationalism, how can peaceful coexistence be taken as the general policy line of a communist party?”80 What Mao had done here clarified how the Bandung discourse might remain a revolutionary way of representation in China’s international policies. He made it clear that if the PRC would like to remain a revolutionary country, it should not adopt peaceful coexistence, but rather should support the world revolution and struggles for national independence and liberation in colonies and semicolonies as the essence of China’s international practice. All of this caused profound differences between Beijing and Moscow. When Khrushchev and his colleagues made it clear that they were unwilling to yield to such Maoist discourse, the relationship between Moscow and Beijing became quite “tense.”

Conclusion The central argument of this chapter is that the introduction of the Bandung discourse and its inclusion in the PRC’s representation of its international policies did not represent a “retreat” by the Chinese communists from a revolutionary foreign policy that they had adopted in the first five years of the People’s Republic. Despite the introduction of the Bandung discourse, the PRC remained a revolutionary country. Indeed, in order to understand the overall identity of the PRC as a revolutionary country and its sponsorship of the “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence,” it is essential to comprehend the ways in which the PRC’s revolutionariness was defined. The key here is to place the discussion into a proper historical context. Mao’s China was a communist country, yet it was different from the Soviet Union in an important sense: While the Soviet Union was established on the ruins of czarist Russia, China’s modern history was said to have suffered from the aggression and incursion of Western imperialism/colonialism. Throughout the course of the Chinese communist revolution, Mao and the CCP leadership had perceived the Chinese revolution not only as an integral part of the “world proletarian revolution” but also as a central component of the struggles by the oppressed peoples in the non-Western world against the domination of Western imperialism and colonialism. The latter feature provided the Chinese communist revolution’s rural-centered pattern—one that was drastically different from the prevailing theories of orthodox Marxism-Leninism—with unique justification and, as a result, legitimacy. It also helped fashion the CCP’s claim that the Chinese revolution represented an example of universal significance for promoting anti-imperialist/colonialist national movements, as well as for spreading communist revolutions, in the non-Western world. As discussed in this paper, in the late 1940s, when the Cold War was emerging on a global scale, Mao introduced his “intermediate zone” theory—he

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claimed that between the United States and the Soviet Union existed a vast intermediate zone mainly composed of oppressed non-Western countries (including China), that before the U.S. imperialists could attack the Soviet Union they first had to control the intermediate zone, and that, as a result, Asia became a central arena of the Cold War. Mao’s China was a revolutionary country not only in that it was determined to overthrow the capitalist/imperialist global system, but also in that it intended to create a new world order defined by the oppressed nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Thus, in a unique way, Beijing linked the anti-imperialist and anticolonialist movements in nonWestern countries to the world revolution. Here one encounters an important cause underlying the Sino–American confrontation, as well as an important potential cause eventually leading to the Sino–Soviet split. It is not surprising that a direct consequence of Mao and the CCP leadership’s specific definition and representation of the Five Principles was significant friction between Beijing and Moscow, resulting in profound division in the international communist movement. Within this context, Mao and his comrades viewed Bandung as a great opportunity that would allow them to explore the possibility of establishing a broad anti–Western-imperialist/colonialist “united front” among the “oppressed nations” in the non-Western world. The “Bandung discourse”—especially its emphasis on “peaceful coexistence” between countries with different political and social systems—created some space in a tactical sense in the PRC’s dealings with such Western countries as the UK and France; more importantly, however, it allowed Beijing to link—in its own ways—communist revolution and decolonization. In conclusion, the PRC’s challenges to the existing international system— which revealed the essence of the revolutionariness of Chinese foreign policy under Mao—combined championing world revolution with promoting the global process of decolonization, and thus playing a key role in bridging the two important historical trends in the postwar world. From Beijing’s perspective, therefore, the Bandung discourse enhanced, rather than weakened, the PRC as a revolutionary country on the international scene. As far as its impacts on the orientation and development of the global Cold War is concerned, that the PRC’s revolutionary international behavior was enriched by the Bandung discourse transformed not only the concept and reality of the international communist movement but also the actual composition of decolonization processes in non-Western countries. Consequently, the Cold War also experienced subtle yet profound changes—largely because of Chinese influence, the Cold War became a much broader and more complicated phenomenon than the mere confrontation between the capitalist West and the socialist East.

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Notes 1. See, for example, Mao Zedong, “On People’s Democratic Dictatorship,” “The Bankruptcy of Historical Idealism,” and “The Chinese People Have Stood Up,” Mao Zedong xuanji (Selected Works of Mao Zedong, hereafter MXJ) (Beijing: Renmin, 1965 and 1977), 4: 1473–86, 1519–20; 5: 342–46. See also Zhou Enlai, “Our Foreign Policies and Tasks,” Zhou Enlai waijiao wenxuan (Selected Diplomatic Papers of Zhou Enlai, hereafter ZWJWX) (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian, 1990), 48–57. 2. In the early years of the PRC, for example, Beijing’s leaders characterized Vietnam, Malaya, Burma, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, and India as being dominated by “reactionary forces.” Liu Shaoqi to Stalin, “Report on Strategies of National Revolutionary Movements in East Asia,” August 14, 1949, Jianguo yilai Liu Shaoqi wengao (Liu Shaoqi’s Manuscripts since the Founding of the People’s Republic, hereafter LWG) (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian, 2005), 1: 50–53. 3. For discussions, see Chen Jian, “China and the Indochina Settlement of the Geneva Conference of 1954,” in Mark Lawrence and Fredrik Logvall, eds., The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 240–62; Zhai Qiang, China and the Vietnam Wars (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), chapter 2. 4. The five principles or “Pancha shila” included (1) mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, (2) nonaggression, (3) noninterference in other countries’ internal affairs, (4) equal and mutual benefit, and (5) peaceful coexistence. 5. Zhou’s speech at the Asian-African conference, April 23, 1955, ZWJWX, 134. 6. See, for example, Zhang Baijia, “Transforming Self, Influencing the World: Basic Trends in the Development of 20th-Century Chinese Diplomacy,” Zhongguo shehui kexue (Social Sciences in China), no. 1 (2001): 12–14; Niu Jun, “The Shaping of the New China’s Diplomacy and Its Features,” Lishi yanjiu (Historical Research), no. 5 (1999): 39–41; Mineo Nakajima, “Foreign Relations: From the Korean War to the Bandung Line,” in Roderick MacFarquhar and John K. Fairbank, eds., Cambridge History of China, vol. 14 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 283–92; KuoKang Shao, Zhou Enlai and the Foundations of Chinese Foreign Policy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 211–37. Shu Guang Zhang’s recent study on the Chinese experiences at Geneva and Bandung is based on the support of newly declassified Chinese diplomatic documents, but his interpretation fits the framework of the above-cited earlier studies on the subject. See Shu Guang Zhang, “Constructing ‘Peaceful Coexistence’: China’s Diplomacy toward the Geneva and Bandung Conferences, 1954–55,” Cold War History 7, no. 4 (November 2007): 509–28. 7. “Resolution on the World Situation and the Chinese Communist Party,” July 1922; “Resolution on Joining the Third International,” July 1922; “Declaration of the Second Congress of the CCP,” July 1922; in Zhonggong zhongyang wenjian xuanji (Selected Works of the CCP Central Committee, hereafter ZYWJ) (Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao, 1988), 1: 59–60, 67, 99–117. 8. See, for example, Tony Saich, The Origins of the First United Front in China: The Role of Sneevliet (Alias Maring) (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 1991); Yang Kuisong, Zhonggong yu Mosike de guanxi, 1920–1960 (The CCP’s Relations and Moscow, 1920–1960) (Taipei: Dongda Tushu, 1997), chapter 1. 9. “Draft Constitution of the Chinese Communist Party,” June 1923, The United Front Department of the CCP, comps., Minzu wenti wenxian huibian (A Collection of

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Documents on Nationality Issues) (Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao, 1991), 21–22; “Declaration of the Third Congress of the CCP,” June 1923, ZYWJ, 1: 166. 10. “Declaration of the Third Congress of the CCP,” June 1923, ZYWJ, 1: 166. Italics are the author’s. 11. See, for example, Mao, “Analysis of Classes in Chinese Society,” “Report on the Peasant Movement in Hunan,” “Why Can the Red Political Power Exist in China?,” and “A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire,” MXJ, 1: 3–11, 13–46, 49–58, 101–11. 12. Cited in Yang, Zhonggong he mosike de guanxi, 519. 13. For a more detailed discussion of how, toward the end of World War II, the CCP developed tactics and strategies on the political, military, and diplomatic fronts for “taking over” China after the end of the war, see Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), chapter 1. 14. Mao, “On Coalition Government,” MXJ, 3: 1030–31. 15. Odd Arne Westad, Cold War and Revolution: Soviet–American Rivalry and the Origins of the Chinese Civil War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), chapters 2–3. 16. For more detailed discussions of how Stalin pressured Mao and the CCP to negotiate with Jiang, see Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War, 26–29. 17. For discussions, see Westad, Cold War and Revolution, esp. chapters 4 and 7; Niu Jun, From Yan’an to the World: The Origin and Development of Chinese Communist Foreign Policy (Norwalk, CT: EastBridge, 2005), chapters 10 and 11. 18. Mao, “Talks with Anna Louis Strong,” MXJ, 4: 1191–92. 19. Lu Dingyi, “Explanations of Several Basic Problems Concerning the Postwar International Situation,” Renmin ribao (People’s Daily), January 4 and 5, 1947. Mao revised and approved the article before its publication. 20. Ibid. See also Mao’s conversation with Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai, November 21, 1946, Mao Zedong nianpu (A Chronological Record of Mao Zedong) (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian), 3: 150–51. 21. On the eve of the PRC’s establishment, Mao formally announced that the “new China” would lean toward the Soviet Union in international affairs. See Mao, “On People’s Democratic Dictatorship,” June 30, 1949, MXJ, 4: 1477–78. 22. See, for example, Liu Shaoqi, “On Internationalism and Nationalism,” Renmin ribao, November 7, 1948; Si Mu, “The International Significance of the Victory of the Chinese People’s Revolutionary War,” Shijie zhishi (World Affairs, Beijing), December 1949, 19–21; Lu Dingyi, “The Worldwide Significance of the Chinese Revolution,” Lu Dingyi wenji (A Collection of Lu Dingyi’s Works) (Beijing: Renmin, 1992), 432–39. 23. For discussions of the CCP’s preparation of the report, see Shi Zhe, “Liu Shaoqi in Moscow,” Chinese Historians 6, no. 1 (Spring 1993): 70–71. For the text of the report, see LWG, 1: 1–22. 24. LWG, 1: 11, 16–17. 25. Mao, “On People’s Democratic Dictatorship,” June 30, 1949, MXJ, 4: 1477–78. 26. LWG, 1: 3–4. 27. Jin Chongji, et al., Liu Shaoqi zhuan (A Biography of Liu Shaoqi) (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian, 1998), 651–52; Shi Zhe, “Liu Shaoqi in Moscow,” 82–83. 28. Jin Chongji, et al., Liu Shaoqi zhuan, 651; Shi Zhe, “Liu Shaoqi in Moscow,” 84.

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29. Shi Zhe, “Liu Shaoqi in Moscow,” 84–85. 30. For accounts of Mao’s visit, see Pang Xianzhi and Jin Chongji, eds., Mao Zedong zhuan, 1949–1976 (A Biography of Mao Zedong, 1949–1976) (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian, 2003), chapter 2; Shi Zhe, Zai lishi juren shenbian (At the Side of Historical Giants, rev.) (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian, 1998), 385–423. 31. Liu, “Speech at the Opening Session of the Unions in the Asian-Oceanic Region,” November 16, 1949, LWG, 1: 160–69. 32. Ibid., 162–64. 33. Ibid., 161–62. 34. For discussions, see Chen Jian, China’s Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino–American Confrontation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); Shu Guang Zhang, Mao’s Military Romanticism: China and the Korean War, 1950– 1953 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995). 35. For discussions, see Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War, chapter 4; Zhai Qiang, China and the Vietnam Wars, chapters 1–2. 36. For discussions along these lines, see Chen Jian, China’s Road to the Korean War; and Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War, chapter 4. 37. The “Three Antis” movement was designed to deal with corrupt Communist cadres; the “Five-Antis” movement was aimed at regulating the national bourgeoisie class. For discussions, see Roderick MacFarquhar and John K. Fairbank, eds., The Cambridge History of China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 14: 88–91. 38. For discussions, see Chen Jian, “China’s Changing Aims during the Korean War,” Journal of American–East Asian Relations 1, no. 1 (Spring 1992): 8–41. 39. Telegram, CCP Central Committee to the Chinese Military Advisory Group, July 22, 1952, The Editorial Group of the History of Chinese Military Advisors in Vietnam, ed., Zhongguo junshi guwentaun yuanyue kangfa douzheng shishi (A Factual Account of the Participation of the Chinese Military Advisory Group in the Struggle of Assisting Vietnam and Resisting France) (Beijing: Jiefangjun 1990), 58. 40. In defining the Chinese “victim mentality,” I point out: “While it is common for non-Western countries to identify themselves as victims of the Western-dominated worldwide course of modernization, the Chinese perception of their nation being a victimized member of the international community is unique, because it formed such a sharp contrast with the long-lived Central Kingdom concept. The Chinese thus felt that their nation’s modern experience was more humiliating and less tolerable than that of any other victimized non-Western country in the world.” Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War, 12. 41. See Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, vol. 16 (The Geneva Conference) (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1954), 415. 42. In a Chinese Foreign Ministry document entitled “Preliminary Assessment of and Preparation for the Geneva Conference,” completed in late February, Zhou and his colleagues contended that the Geneva conference was a great opportunity for the PRC to break up the “blockade, embargo and rearmament policies” against the PRC by the United States and other imperialist and reactionary forces in the world, so the PRC not only “must actively participate in the Geneva conference” but also “must make it a success.” Li Ping and Ma Zhisun, et al., Zhou Enlai nianpu (A Chronological Record of Zhou Enlai, hereafter ZNP) (Beijing Zhongyang wenxian, 1998), 1: 356–57.

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43. See, for example, Zhou’s Speech on Diplomatic Issues, October 18, 1954, Fujian Provincial Archive, 101-5-542-54.10.18. 44. For more detailed discussions, see Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War, chapter 4. 45. Zhou to CCP Central Committee, April 23, 1954, 206-00048-08, PRC Foreign Ministry Archive, hereafter FMA; Shi Zhe, Zai lishi juren shenbian, 480–86; ZNP, 1: 355; see also Ilya Gaiduk, Confronting Vietnam: Soviet Policy toward the Indochina Conflict, 1951–1963 (Washington, DC, and Stanford, CA: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Stanford University Press, 2003), 22–24. 46. ZNP, 1: 356–57; Jin Chongji et al., Zhou Enlai zhuan, 1949–1976 (A Biography of Zhou Enlai) (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian, 1998), 154–56. 47. See, for example, PRC Foreign Ministry Archive edition, 1954nian rineiwa huiyi (The Geneva Conference of 1954, hereafter 1954nian) (Beijing: Shijie zhishi, 2006), 235–314. 48. Xiong Huayuan, Zhou Enlai chudeng shijie wutai (Zhou Enlai’s Debut on the World Scene, hereafter shijie wutai) (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian, 1998), 81–82; see also FRUS, 1952–1954, 16: 755–56. 49. Telegram, Zhou to Mao, Liu and CCP Central Committee, May 9, 1954, 1954niai, 119–21; Xiong, Shijie wutai, 98. 50. Zhou to Mao, Liu and CCP Central Committee, cited from Jin, et al., Zhou Enlai zhuan, 1949–1976, 168–69. 51. Shijie wutai, 90–91; ZNP, 1: 383–84. 52. For more detailed discussion, see Chen Jian, “China and the Indochina Settlement of the Geneva Conference of 1954.” 53. Zhou to CCP Central Committee, 18:00, July 4, 1954, 206-00019-03, FMA, 23–24; and Xiong, Shijie wutai, 141–42. 54. Xiong, Shijie wutai, 128–29. See also Zhou’s conversation with U Nu, June 28, 1954, FMA 203-00007-03. 55. “Conversation with Chou Enlai (Zhou Enlai),” June 25, 1954, Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 26: 371; Zhou to Mao, Liu and the CCP Central Committee, July 15, 1954, 1954nian, 320. 56. Zhou’s conversation with Tep Phan, June 20, 1954; Zhou’s conversation with Sananikone, July 18, 1954, 1954nian, 316–19, 332–35. 57. Li Kenong’s summary report on the Geneva conference, July 1954, cited from Xiong, Shijie wutai, 174–75. 58. Telegram, CCP Central Committee to Zhou, July 27, 1954, cited from Pei Jianzhang, et al., Zhonghua renmin gongheguo waijiaoshi (A Diplomatic History of the People’s Republic) (Beijing: Shijie zhishi, 1994), 337. 59. Telegram, CCP Central Committee to Zhou, July 27, 1954, ZNP, 1: 405. 60. See, for example, Mao’s conversation with the British Labor Party delegation, August 24, 1954, Mao Zedong waijiao wenxuan (Selected Diplomatic Papers of Mao Zedong, hereafter MWJWX) (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian, 1993), 159–60. 61. Mao’s speech at a Politburo enlarged meeting, July 7, 1954, Mao Zedong wenji (Selected Works of Mao Zedong, hereafter MWJ) (Beijing, Renmin 1998), 6: 332. 62. Mao’s conversation with Harry Pollitt, April 29, 1955, MWJWX, 205–6. 63. Mao’s conversation with Nehru, October 23, 1954, MWJ, 6: 369. 64. Mao’s speech at a Politburo enlarged meeting, July 7, 1954, MWJ, 6: 334.

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65. Mao’s conversation with the British Labor Party delegation, August 24, 1954, MWJWX, 159–60. 66. Mao’s four conversations with Nehru, October 1954; Mao’s conversation with Ù Nu, December 11, 1954, MWJ, 6:361–71, 374–83. 67. It is here we see a prelude to Mao’s introduction of his “Two Intermediate Zones” thesis in the early and mid-1960s, when the global process of decolonization was approaching its conclusion. In a longer view, we may take these of Mao’s ideas of the mid-1950s as an early version of his “Three Worlds” theory formally introduced in the 1970s. 68. Telegram, PRC Foreign Ministry to various Chinese embassies, December 25, 1954, PRC Foreign Ministry Archive edition, Zhongguo daibiaotuan chuxi 1955nian yafei huiyi (Chinese Delegation Attending the Asian-African Conference of 1955) (Beijing, Shijie zhishi, 2007), 25. 69. “Plans for Participating in the Asian-African Conference,” April 5, 1955, 2070004-01(1), 8, FMA. 70. “Plans for Participating in the Asian-African Conference,” April 5, 1955, 2070004-01(1), 5; “Preliminary Working Plans for Participating in the Asian–African Conference,” January 16, 1955, 207-0005-2(1), FMA. 71. On declassified Chinese documents on the “Kashmir Princess Incident,” the failed attempt by the Nationalist intelligence agents to assassinate Zhou, see Zhongguo daibiaotuan chuxi 1955nian yafei huiyi, 144–260; see also Steve Tsang, “Target Zhou Enlai: The ‘Kashmir Princess Incident’ of 1955,” The China Quarterly 139 (September 1994), 766–82. 72. Zhou’s supplementary remarks at the Asian-African Conference, April 19, 1954, ZWJWX, 120–25. 73. Mao’s Speech to the Supreme State Council, September 5, 1958, Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao (Mao Zedong’s Manuscripts since the Founding of the People’s Republic, hereafter MWG) (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian, 1993), 7: 386. 74. Wu Lengzi, Shinian lunzhan (Ten-Year Debates) (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian, 1998), 6. 75. Ibid., 39–40; Shi Zhe, Zai lishi juren shenbian, 551–52. 76. See discussions in Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War, chapter 6. 77. Shi Zhe, Zai lishi juren shenbian, 558–59. 78. Ibid. 79. Mao’s speech at the Moscow Conference of Communist and Workers’ Parties, MWG, 6: 635–36. 80. Wu Lengzi, Shinian lunzhan, 152–53.

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7. From Cheering to Volunteering: Vietnamese Communists and the Coming of the Cold War, 1940–1951 Tuong Vu

How did leaders of the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) greet the outbreak of the Cold War, and in particular the formation of two opposing ideological blocs? Existing scholarship has depicted an independently minded ICP charting a pragmatic course vis-à-vis Moscow in the 1941–1954 period.1 This line of interpretation would suggest that the arrival of the Cold War, which imposed a rigid global order on small countries, would not be celebrated in Vietnam. Using party documents and Vietnamese newspaper sources, in this chapter I examine the changing worldviews of ICP leaders from 1940 to 1951 in the context of anticolonial nationalist revolution. Long before the outbreak of the Cold War, leading Vietnamese communists had cherished a particular worldview in which the world was divided into two camps.2 In their imagination, the socialist camp represented all the best things in the world whereas the imperialist camp contained the worst. This binary worldview had three particular characteristics. First, international patterns of alliance were assumed to fundamentally reflect the domestic I’m indebted to helpful comments from Nayan Chanda, Ilya Gaiduk, Chen Jian, LienHang Nguyen, Christian Ostermann, Balázs Szalontai, Peter Zinoman, and participants at the Workshop on Between Imperial Retreat and the Cold War, Paris, September 2004. Christopher Goscha deserves special thanks for his encouragement and advice. I also wish to thank Steven Goldstein for educating me about Chinese foreign policy and Smith College for offering generous financial support and a collegial working environment. Research in Hanoi was sponsored in part by the Center for Vietnamese and Intercultural Studies, whose director Vu Minh Giang was very kind and supportive.

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antagonism in Marxist theory between bourgeois and proletarian classes. There were simple and complex versions of this binary world; often complex versions were simply attempts to explain away facts contrary to simple versions. Second, note that the term “binary” and not “bipolar” is used. The binary world of Vietnamese communists did not assume the existence of a central pole within each camp around which other states converged. Their worldview thus suggested a more complex world than a simple bipolar one centered on the United States and the Soviet Union. To the Vietnamese, there would often be a pole or center in each camp; for example, the Soviet Union was always the center of the socialist camp to them. However, the existence of such a center was viewed as a given historical condition; one did not need to assume the hegemony of the center over the periphery nor any inherent inferiority on the part of peripheral states. Third, this particular worldview held by Vietnamese leaders as conveyed in party documents had a stylized, dramatized, and often vulgarized quality to it. On the one hand, this worldview appeared dogmatic because it was based on relatively fixed principles and was repeatedly reproduced in simple forms. On the other hand, the language used to express it was personified and full of lively images. Speculative future scenarios were also drawn with rich imagination, sometimes in spite of the limited information about world politics available to their authors. Given their binary worldview, the development of the Cold War did not surprise them and was in fact welcome by many top Vietnamese leaders. The evidence shows that first they cheered, and then volunteered to fight on the frontlines. In fact, war was precisely what they had looked forward to at least since the early 1940s. It vindicated their beliefs about the fundamental cleavage in international politics between revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries. It allowed them to proudly display their revolutionary credentials and to work immediately on realizing their revolutionary ambitions. Previously, the revolutionaries had been making empty promises to peasants; the Cold War allowed ICP leaders to finally implement their cherished but long-delayed radical land reform. The main body of this chapter analyzes ICP documents and other publications beginning with the Seventh Central Committee Plenum in November 1940 and ending with the Second Party Congress in February 1951. Note that the Seventh instead of the Eighth Plenum in May 1941 is selected as the starting point. The Eighth Plenum was convened by Ho Chi Minh, who had just returned from the Soviet Union; it established the Viet Minh as a united front of all social classes and placed class interests as secondary to those of the nation. It thus marked the turning point in the revolutionary strategy of the ICP. However, the Seventh Plenum is a valuable departing point for two reasons. First,

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key participants at the Eighth Plenum, including Truong Chinh, Hoang Quoc Viet, and Hoang Van Thu were also present at the Seventh Plenum.3 The first two rose to the top at this Plenum and would be among the top five of the ICP leadership over the next 15 years.4 The Seventh Plenum resolution was the first document that systematically expressed the views of these leaders as they assumed ICP leadership. Second, given Ho’s absence at the Seventh Plenum and his presence at the Eighth Plenum, the contrast between the ideas expressed and policies made at the two plenums may shed light on his contribution. In the conclusion, I draw from the evidence five important implications for the literature on Vietnamese politics. First, the war between the DRV and the United States in the 1960s was not unimaginable in 1945 as many have argued. It was certainly not inevitable, but still predictable based on the worldview of Vietnamese leaders in the early 1940s. Second, the difference between a “pragmatic” Ho and his “radical lieutenants” in conventional historiography was not that great when their fundamental worldviews are examined. Third, it is often suggested that internationalist tendencies in the ICP were weakened after its failed Southern rebellion in 1940. This suggestion, however, conflates Ho and the ICP as a whole; it does not stand up to close scrutiny based on the evidence here. In fact, internationalism may have intensified after 1940. Fourth, existing literature is obsessed with the false dichotomy between nationalism and communism, while slighting ICP leaders’ ideological beliefs and revolutionary commitments. The review of their worldview during this most difficult period of the revolution indicates that those beliefs and commitments were extraordinary. Not only were Vietnamese communists capable of thinking independently, they also possessed radical beliefs that so far have not been sufficiently recognized by outside observers. Finally, I will distinguish two contradictory types of documents during this period and suggest how each ought to be used.

Imperialist War, Socialist Peace Unlike ICP leaders of the 1930s who were trained in the Soviet Union and worked as Comintern agents, participants at the Seventh Plenum had never been out of Indochina and southern China.5 How did they conceptualize the world? In the section about the international situation, the resolution of the Seventh Plenum began with a brief but brave announcement: The Plenum would limit its analysis of the war and the world’s revolutionary movement to the previous year, “in sum, (to) the basic factors that would extinguish the fires of imperialist warfare, destroy the capitalist world and build a new one: the so-

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cialist world.”6 Two different worlds existed: One was new and socialist whereas the other was old and capitalist. The subsection on World War II discussed how fascist Germany and Italy had defeated imperialist England and France. The selfish United States helped the British in this war not only to cope with the fascist threat but also to wrest control of British military bases and to obtain other economic concessions. Overall, the war was characterized as one between rising imperialists (Germany, Italy, and Japan) and richer, more established ones (Britain, France, and the United States) for control of colonies. The question that dominated this subsection involved the reasons why there was war among imperialists, which after all belonged to the same camp. Why did they fight among themselves even though all of these fascist and imperialist states wanted to attack the Soviet Union to “smother the world’s revolutionary oven” (lo lua)?7 The answer: The Soviet Union had become increasingly more powerful and none of the imperialists wanted to take the responsibility of firing the first shot against it. To prepare for the eventual war with the Soviet Union, the imperialists caused a “war among their own brothers” to consolidate their strength first. Thus, World War II could eventually become a war between the imperialists and the Soviet Union. However, because the imperialists were fighting one another, and the war was causing uprisings by oppressed peoples and the world’s proletariats, even when the imperialists were finally able to reunite and attack the Soviet Union, they would then be annihilated by the Red Army and the “world revolution.”8 This revolution had a good chance of success because it was led by the Comintern, “the only political party of the world’s proletariats and peoples.” The resolution made an implicit attempt to defend the Molotov–Ribbentrop agreement between Stalin and Hitler. Why did the leader of the revolutionary camp sign a truce with the counter-revolutionary camp? Was it true, as Trotskyites claimed, that the Soviet Union was preoccupied with building socialism and neglected its responsibility to revolutions elsewhere? It was pointed out that the Soviet Union had intervened from the beginning to prevent the world war from spreading; in the process it wisely expanded its influence, “which would help strengthen the world’s revolutionary fortress” (thanh tri). Russia did not plot with any imperialists to rob Poland and the Baltic nations of their independence; rather, it helped liberate these small nations from the imperialist yoke.9 It was further argued that building socialism in one country could help world revolution. The success of the third five-year plan had made the Soviet Union the most powerful socialist country on earth; this changed the balance of force in favor of “the revolutionary camp.”10 The evidence of increased Soviet power

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was shown in the fact that “the most aggressive and counter-revolutionary imperialists were now trying to “curry favor with” (ninh hot) it. The Soviet Union stood above them all; it had no interest in (khong them) helping one imperialist to fight another. Those who pledged not to attack it were accorded good relations (hence, Molotov–Ribbentrop). The section ended with a comparison of the two worlds: “[W]hereas the capitalist world was now full of wails and sobs, of smashed bones and rotten flesh, the socialist world was a humane place where people lived in peace and happiness.” This contrast, it was suggested, urged the oppressed peoples and classes to overthrow imperialism and to follow the Soviet Union.11 The section on the appropriate revolutionary path for Indochina described the class situation and the ICP vision of the revolution. The two camps abroad corresponded to the two camps at home. The resolution claimed that Indochinese “proletariats“ deserved the right to lead the Indochinese revolution more than “the bourgeoisie” did because (1) the former were the most revolutionary, being the most exploited and oppressed class; (2) they had their own political party that had been guided (diu dat) by the Comintern; (3) they had become a component of world revolution; and (4) they were still in the infancy stage (be), but they were growing up fast.12 The more imperialists invested in Indochina, the faster they would grow up (lon khoe). They were born when socialism had been victorious in the Soviet Union. In contrast, the Indochinese bourgeoisie were also infants, but their prospect of a long life was bleak (hay con dau xanh da thieu trien vong) because they were born when world capitalism had become decayed (thoi nat). Even though peasants were the largest class in Indochina, they played only a subsidiary role in this binary conflict between the proletariats and the bourgeoisie. The resolution called for the proletariats “to do all they could to draw peasants to their side. They had to maintain a close relationship to peasants and lead peasants in the struggle. They should not let peasants follow the leadership of the bourgeoisie and urban petit bourgeois or fall into the traps of the pro-French, pro-Japanese Vietnamese traitors.”13 True to Marx, peasants in this view could only be followers and even so they were easily duped. When the Eighth Plenum was convened six months later, the world situation had not changed significantly. Much of the discussion on this topic in the Eighth Plenum resolution focused on the comparison between World Wars I and II. Both were wars among imperialists for colonies and markets. The second one was on a larger scale and more destructive, indicating the greater extent of conflict among the imperialists. Furthermore, World War II occurred after the birth of the Soviet Union, “a socialist country of one-sixth of world’s area having very important economic and political status and being the pillar

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of peace and the fatherland of world proletariats.”14 In this war, some weak nations such as China had been able to resist fascist aggression. The proletariats this time were also much better organized and united under the leadership of the Third Comintern. These differences meant that this war would be more auspicious for the world revolution “to kill the imperialists.” The resolution predicted that if World War I had given birth to the Soviet Union, World War II would midwife many more socialist countries and successful revolutions.15 The prediction indicated that ICP leaders viewed the divided world as a recent phenomenon that would become sharper in the near future as the number of socialist countries increased. The contrast between the socialist part of the world and the rest was again described in vivid terms: “[W]hile the whole world was drawn by the imperialists into a fierce massacre, only the Soviet Union enjoyed peace.”16 Thanks to its “wise and determined” policy to pursue peace, the resolution explained, the Soviet Union had been able to expand its border and stopped the war from spreading to Eastern Europe. The Soviet Union now had “the most powerful army in the world fully armed with advanced weapons”; it was ready to deal with any imperialist aggression and had been selflessly helping small nations such as China to fight the fascists. On the other hand, in the imperialist camp, the United States was still depicted as cunningly profiteering from the war: It was pointed out that the United States did not fight but sold weapons to both sides so that they could “slaughter mankind” (nhan loai). If the section on international situation did not show any noticeable differences between the two plenum resolutions, the analysis of domestic politics in the Eighth Plenum resolution was less dogmatic. Instead of a simple picture of the ICP versus the rest, the analysis listed the ICP as one of the anti-Japanese parties (still the best though), and also briefly discussed pro-Japanese parties.17 The resolution had a new section on “the national issue,” pointing out how the Indochinese peoples had been divided and used against each other by the French. To fight the French and the Japanese, all these peoples had to unite because one or two would not be sufficient. As the largest group, the Vietnamese should lead and help (diu dat giup do) other groups, but once independence had been achieved, should offer them the right to self-determination.18 Although it emphasized “the national issue,” the resolution did not fail to reiterate that the Indochinese revolution was a component of world revolution whereas their enemies, the French and Japanese, were part of world imperialism and fascism. Indochinese nations thus “shared a destiny” with “revolutionary China” and the Soviet Union, both of which were also fighting fascism. Of course, the British, Americans, and Chinese Guomindang government (GMD) were also fighting fascism, but they were not included in this club.

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The class analysis in the resolution showed an appreciation of social and political changes in favor of the revolutionary movement. Under the cruel exploitation of resources in Indochina by the Japanese, “the attitudes of various classes” toward the revolution had changed.19 The working class, peasants, and the petit bourgeoisie all became more supportive of the revolution. Even landlords, rich peasants, and many capitalists had become neutral or sympathetic rather than hostile. The use of “attitudes” (thai do) instead of “interests” (quyen loi) indicated a more flexible approach toward class analysis. Thai do was manipulable; quyen loi was tied to the economic structure and relatively fixed. As many have noted, the Eighth Plenum placed national interests above those of class.20 It was concluded that national independence must be achieved before land reform could be carried out. Peasants would still be interested in joining a nationalist revolution because it would eliminate the French– Japanese exploitation and would give them community lands and lands taken from traitors. Furthermore, the nationalist revolution would not delay the social revolution because (1) once the party, the vanguard of the proletariats, had seized the leadership of the nationalist revolution, the party could easily direct this revolution to serve the socialist cause; (2) in the nationalist revolution the party would take control of the government and use it to carry out a social revolution; and (3) once the Indochinese revolution succeeded, “the world would be like a boiling pot.” This situation would allow the Indochinese revolution to leap forward to launch a proletarian revolution and build socialism.21 These three scenarios suggested that while its authors advocated the nationalist route, a world revolution and a domestic social revolution were never far away from their minds. A nationalist revolution was seen as paving the way for, and once successfully completed, necessarily moving to the side at the earliest convenience for a proletarian revolution. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in late June 1941, supporting the Soviet Union became the main activity on the ICP agenda.22 We have seen in the above plenum resolutions that the Soviet Union was viewed as “the fortress of world revolution” and as a protector of small and oppressed peoples around the world in their struggles against imperialism. As explained, supporting the Soviet Union meant working for Indochinese independence, because if the Soviet Union won the war, it would in turn help liberate Indochinese from French and Japanese imperialist rule. The party instructed its members to propagandize about this issue to mobilize mass support for the Soviet Union, form “Friends of the Soviet Union” groups, and raise donations for the Soviet Red Army. Indigenous troops under the colonial government also needed to be ed-

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ucated about this issue because one day they might be sent by the Pétain government to fight the Soviet Union. As part of this campaign to raise support for the Soviet Union, Viet Nam Doc Lap (Independent Vietnam), the Viet Minh weekly newsletter, published an article titled, “What kind of country is Russia?”23 As this article described, Russia was the largest country in the world. Twenty years ago Russians had been forced to do corvée labor (di phu) and pay taxes, and been “exploited, oppressed, poor and ignorant like [the Vietnamese].” Thanks to Russians’ “unity and struggle,” the emperor was overthrown in 1917 and since then the people had enjoyed “equality, freedom and happiness.” Currently, Russian workers worked only seven hours a day, had a day off for every five days worked, had a one-month vacation every year, and all this plus “good salaries.” Peasants had all the land they needed and could borrow plows and tractors (may cay, may gat) from the state (nha nuoc). A peasant received at least five kilograms of rice (gao) a day; everybody had more clothes and food than they needed. Many women became mandarins (lam quan), doctors, and pilots; they enjoyed all the rights men had. Free schooling for male and female children was mandatory up to age sixteen. The state took care of children and the elderly and assigned doctors to treat sick people. The people were free to elect their hamlet chiefs (ly truong), subdistrict chiefs (chanh tong), and the top leader of the country. If they were not happy with these officials, they could sack them. “No one is oppressed, unlike in our country.” The article offered a glimpse of how ICP leaders imagined and wanted other Vietnamese to imagine the Soviet Union. The rich and happy Soviet Union became a source of inspiration and a model for emulation. The extremely high quality of life there (especially compared to Vietnam) gave the USSR a mythical aura; yet the details made it believable. Foreign concepts (nha nuoc, may cay, may gat) were interspersed with familiar ones (di phu, gao, lam quan, ly truong, chanh tong), making the myth novel yet accessible to ordinary Vietnamese.

Conditional Alliance with “Old Imperialist Foxes” Pearl Harbor suddenly opened up the strong possibility of an Allied invasion of Indochina. On the one hand, ICP leaders continued to gamble that their destiny would fall in with the Soviet Union and world proletariats.24 The world was still divided into two camps (phe), but these were for the time being overlaid by two fronts (mat tran): fascists and antifascists comprised of the Soviet Union, England, the United States, China, and the global revolutionary forces. England and the United States were now allies in the same front but they were

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not to be fully trusted. ICP leaders called on the British and U.S. proletariats to continue applying pressure on the capitalists in these countries so that they would fight the fascists to the end; otherwise, they might capitulate to the fascists and turn to fight the Soviet Union instead. On the other hand, the possibility of the Chinese GMD, and British and American troops entering Indochina required the ICP to be more accommodating to these imperialists and the GMD. To the GMD, ICP leaders called for cooperation on an equal status (binh dang tuong tro); the Chinese must understand that they were in Indochina not to conquer it but to help themselves.25 To the British and Americans, the ICP proposed “conditional alliance and compromise” (nhan nhuong lien hiep co dieu kien). If they helped the Indochinese revolution, the party was willing to grant them certain privileges in Indochina. If they helped De Gaulle to reinstate the colonial system in Indochina, the ICP was prepared to denounce them and continue the struggle for independence. The party warned its members that they should harbor no illusions that these countries would offer the Vietnamese freedom for free. It also assured its members that collaboration with the British and Americans did not mean the party was “serving the interests of these imperialists”; this collaboration was necessary to defeat the fascists. As the war further expanded in 1942, the Soviet–U.S.–British alliance was formally established.26 In response to a new international situation, top ICP leaders gathered and issued a new analysis and changes in policies.27 The resolution of this meeting indicated a lingering uneasiness among these leaders with the new phenomena that apparently contradicted their binary worldview. At one level, the fundamental cleavage remained the same in their view: “[T]he socialist system that represented the new world was fighting with the fascist system which was the most corrupt and barbaric part of the old world.”28 The same old question still haunted the party: Why did American and British imperialists ally with the Soviet Union to fight fascism? Why didn’t they help Hitler to destroy the Soviet Union? To these questions the resolution offered two answers. First, American and British capitalists wanted to defeat Germany to re-take what the latter had taken from them. Second, the British and American masses protested and demanded that their governments fight fascism.29 In allying themselves with the Soviet Union, these capitalist governments were primarily motivated by their imperialist interests but at the same time had to acknowledge (nhin nhan) certain legitimate interests of the people in their countries and their colonies. In any case, this was possible because “the bourgeois democratic regimes in these countries still existed and people were struggling to demand more” democracy. This fact allowed these countries “to be called “democratic” and be part of the antifascist democratic front led by the

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Soviet Union. Their fight against fascism was no longer an imperialist war but a “progressive war.” The document insisted that British and American masses should struggle until their governments opened a second front in Europe to share the burden with the Soviet Union. At the end of this war, the resolution predicted, “bourgeois democratic England and America” would become much more democratic and very different regimes.30 They would be willing to collaborate with the Soviet Union to “organize world peace.” In any case, if the United States and British capitalist ruling classes did not keep their promises, they would be overthrown by the Soviet Union and world revolution. As seen in this example, the ICP leaders’ strategy to explain away the embarrassing but necessary alliance with imperialists was twofold. One was to attribute the progressive policies in imperialist countries to their people, not the ruling classes or the governments concerned. The second was to raise a caveat at the end of the analysis about the counter-revolutionary nature of imperialist powers; this caveat in effect discounted the salience of the entire issue of alliance and reaffirmed the binary worldview. A confrontation with imperialists was always possible and lurking in the background of even the most positive assessment of their behavior. In contrast with images of British and U.S. governments driven by imperialist interests but forced to accommodate popular demands, the Soviet Union again appeared as a benevolent world power. The Soviet Union had retreated in the early months following the German blitzkrieg “in part because it did not produce enough weaponry right away and in part because it wanted to prolong the war.”31 It wasn’t losing but was only waiting for the consolidation of the international democratic front and also for revolutionary movements in other countries to get ready for the opportunity. In other words, the Soviets were accepting losses to themselves for the sake of world revolution. Among other tasks, the resolution called on party members to do a better job in mobilizing mass support for the Soviet resistance; it then explained in detail what they should do.32 In mid-1943, the dissolution of the Comintern posed another theoretical and propaganda challenge to ICP leaders. The party’s claim to leadership in the Indochinese revolution depended in part on its association with the Comintern. The Comintern had also been portrayed as the leader of world revolution. To reassure the rank and file who wondered why the Comintern dissolved itself at such a critical time of war and revolution, the party explained that the Soviet Union needed “to join hands with a relatively progressive section of international bourgeoisie” to fight fascism.33 This act was to fend off two possible scenarios: (1) the United States, England, and the Axis powers formed a joint imperialist front to attack the Soviet Union, or (2) the United States and

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England stood by, saving their forces and dominating the world once the Axis powers and the Soviet Union had destroyed each other.34 This analysis introduced some complexities into the imperialist camp but the view remained essentially binary; the Soviet–U.S. alliance was only a second-best choice that needed justification. The United States and England were not to be fully trusted because counter-revolutionariness was in their nature. The announcement assured party members that the ICP still stood firm and called on them to cast off their doubts and to fight back the criticisms of the Soviet Union by Vietnamese Trotskyites and other groups. As an Allied invasion of Indochina seemed imminent in November 1944, the Viet Minh’s journal Cuu Quoc published a special issue on the “Overseas Problem” (Van de Hai ngoai).35 This issue was directed to the various Vietnamese exile groups in southern China; it called for these groups to unite under Viet Minh leadership to prepare for the possibility of Allied forces entering Vietnam to fight the Japanese. The guarded attitude towards the Chinese and Western powers remained the same. The journal advised its readers not to place their full trust in the promise made at the Moscow conference by the United States and England that all they wanted was to liberate Asian peoples. If the Vietnamese were not prepared when Allied forces entered Vietnam, it was argued, England and the United States would not hesitate to carry out their hidden plan of occupying Vietnam. They would set up a puppet regime or help the French to resurrect the colonial system. Party documents in mid-1945 showed a friendlier attitude toward the GMD Chinese and the United States. A party document in April 1945, following the Japanese overthrow of French rule in Indochina, noted the San Francisco Conference and the Hot Springs meeting.36 The United States and GMD China were praised for taking a “progressive stand” toward former French colonies in contrast to “British hesitancy” and “French stubbornness.” China had been “democratized”: The Chongqing government had been reformed and GMD– CCP negotiations had born some fruit. The Philippines now enjoyed “autonomy” (quyen tu chu). This friendly attitude could have resulted from increased contact between Ho and the American OSS team in southern China at the time. However, when the chips were down, the binary worldview of ICP leaders remained unchanged. On the eve of the Japanese surrender, key party meetings at Tan Trao presided by Ho offered no lengthy analysis but only a brief, bulleted discussion of foreign policy issues.37 At the beginning, the resolution of the meeting pointed out that thanks to the war, the Soviet Union had expanded its borders while China and other countries were liberated. The fascist states were destroyed, resulting in a weaker world capitalist system. The war did not result in a worldwide socialist revolution, but it did create favorable conditions

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for such a revolution by spreading “new democracies” all over the world. The document noted two salient aspects of the situation in Indochina. The different attitudes toward the colonies between the United States and GMD China on the one hand and France and England on the other would favor the Indochinese revolution. However, England and the United States could also let France return to Indochina because of their antagonism toward the Soviet Union. Why the United States and England must or would be antagonistic toward the Soviet Union (note that at the time they were still cooperating to fight fascism) was left unexplained. What the Soviet Union would have to do with Indochina or why it would be interested in Indochina was similarly assumed but not explained. Underlying this analysis was the entrenched perception of a divided world and the assumption that Indochinese destiny lay with the Soviet camp even at the height of U.S.–Viet Minh collaboration. The United States, England, and GMD China were subjects of manipulation, never treated as true allies like the Soviet Union.

Imperialist Lies, Socialist Truths After proclaiming independence in September 1945 and establishing the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in Hanoi, Ho’s government was soon confronted in the north by GMD Chinese forces and their Vietnamese nationalist protégés, and in the South by a British occupation that brought back thousands of French troops. As president and foreign minister of the new state, Ho pursued a foreign policy that has been labeled as “adding friends and reducing enemies.” This policy had two tracks. The first comprised sending out repeated messages and missions requesting international support, including to the United States and Soviet Union. Ho’s widely quoted declaration of independence that used the language of the American Revolution was part of this strategy. This pragmatic approach involved both existing and new elements: The Viet Minh had been courting American and GMD Chinese aid at least since 1944, while secret cables to Stalin marked the first time Vietnamese communist leaders attempted to contact Moscow since Ho left the Soviet Union in late 1938.38 The second track was to negotiate first with the GMD occupation authorities and then with the returning French, if not for Vietnam’s full independence, then for some forms of autonomy and the recognition of his government as the sole authority of Vietnam. A key decision was to publicly dissolve the ICP to indicate to both domestic and foreign audiences that his government was not communist (the ICP was in fact not dissolved but went underground with a new name, Association for Marxist Studies). How GMD generals reacted to this overture is not known, but this decision, which many have attributed to

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Ho, would dog him for years in the form of internal criticism and suspicion from his international communist allies.39 At the same time, it failed to make an impact on American ambivalence toward his regime. Efforts to “add friends” would continue through 1947 with secret missions to court both U.S. and Soviet support. In one such mission, the DRV’s representative even offered special trading privileges for American companies in return for American goods and loans.40 It has been suggested that this gesture signaled the DRV’s serious interest in developing a “realistic and long-term alliance” with the United States.41 The same account acknowledges that sentiments hostile to the United States began to be voiced in ICP documents in late 1945, but these negative views are dismissed as “muted” and as merely revealing the tensions among various perspectives held by Vietnamese leaders rather than exposing the lack of “sincerity” in the DRV’s diplomatic maneuvers. Presented as isolated incidents, such expressions of anti-American sentiments may indeed have meant little. As internal party documents since 1940 analyzed above have shown, however, anti-imperialist (and procommunist) thoughts among ICP members had been deep, systematic, consistent, and longstanding throughout. It is true that the encircled DRV was serious in obtaining U.S. recognition; given the profound attachment of its leaders to social and world revolution, it is a great mistake to infer that ICP leaders now considered the GMD and the United States friends. Below I will examine in some depth the substantial amount of documents and other writings that caution us not to attribute any long-term significance to those diplomatic offers. Several ICP documents dated in November 1945 displayed strong suspicions of U.S. and GMD Chinese motives and a prophetic vision of a coming Cold War. In its analysis of international conditions, a key document issued by the Central Committee pointed out four main antagonisms (mau thuan) in the world42: (1) the Soviet Union versus the imperialist countries, (2) the proletariats versus capitalists, (3) the oppressed peoples versus colonialism, and (4) among the imperialist themselves. The Soviet Union was “quietly rebuilding itself and urgently developed advanced machines and weapons to improve the living standards of its people and to defend itself.” The Soviet press had acknowledged the legitimacy of the struggles in Indochina and Indonesia for independence. In contrast, England, the United States, and Canada wanted to form “an Anglo-Saxon bloc” and use it against the Soviet Union. (But “Soviet calmness and determination overawed them.”) The United States did not want to attack the Soviet Union yet, but it had encouraged GMD troops to fire at the Chinese Red Army “to intimidate the Soviet Union.” The United States lied (noi doi) that it was neutral, but in fact was secretly helping France by lending ships to carry French troops to Indochina. On the one hand, the United States

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wanted to compete with the British and French for influence and economic interests in Southeast Asia; on the other hand, it also wanted to collaborate with them to encircle the Soviet Union. For this purpose, the United States would be ready to sacrifice its own interests in the region. The fourth antagonism was thus not sufficient to override the first three, which were simply a more extended version of the two-camp view.43 Long before the Cold War spread to Asia, the ICP had already been predicting it. The same document noted the tumultuous character of world politics at the time: independence struggles in Southeast Asia, GMD–communist conflict, labor protests in England, and Russian–U.S. disagreements about the occupation of Japan.44 It noted that humankind was experiencing a postwar crisis but this crisis would not lead to a third world war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Instead there would be a peaceful and democratizing period before a new era of war and revolution started. War between the United States and the Soviet Union would not start immediately because “the forces for peace” were stronger than “those for war” at that time. Elements of the forces for peace included movements led by the U.S. Communist Party against U.S. policy to increase tension with the Soviet Union and to intervene into China, popular protests against the British government for its help to French and Dutch colonialists, movements in the West to support independence for India and Indochina, and “new scientific inventions” (i.e., atomic bombs) in the Soviet Union. War between the imperialist and socialist countries would be inevitable, although the form it would take was not specified. However, ICP leaders did not look forward to a third world war; they stressed that the independence struggles in Indochina and Indonesia as well as the GMD–communist conflict in China would not lead to such a war but would lead to more peace.45 This reasoning demonstrates their lack of interest in affairs beyond Indochina. They would be satisfied and embrace peace after their struggle in Indochina succeeded; world revolution to overthrow world capitalism (in World War III) would be something of a long-term commitment. They identified themselves with global proletariats, but were not yet ready to go all the way to call for an immediate world revolution. Late 1945 was the time when the Viet Minh government under Ho ostensibly focused on the anticolonial struggle while rejecting social revolution. However, a different and thinly veiled face of this government is found in Su That (Truth), the biweekly journal of the Association for Marxist Studies in Indochina (the disguised ICP). The editorial in the debut issue of Su That in late 1945 bluntly claimed that one of the periodical’s missions was “to show all fellow Indochinese a basic truth: [T]here was only one way to achieve freedom, peace and happiness for mankind, for every nation and for the working

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class. This way was through the thorough execution (thuc hien triet de) of Marxism.”46 Despite ongoing diplomatic negotiations with France and overtures to the United States, secret party documents and fiery articles in Su That increasingly stressed the two-camp perspective. The “imperialist camp,” now led by the United States, was viewed as significantly weaker (compared to before World War II); they needed time to “bandage their wounds” and prepare for an attack on the Soviet Union and nationalist movements in the colonies.47 The “socialist forces” had become much stronger, especially the Soviet Union, but they were not powerful enough to destroy the capitalist system and establish a world proletarian government. Indochina had become an important zone of revolution. Antagonisms among the imperialists were brewing in Southeast Asia while they were trying to set up an anticommunist front and suppress national liberation movements. In discussing the Chinese conflict, an article in Su That denounced the United States for favoring the GMD, calling for the Soviet Union to play an equal role in mediation.48 While a noncommunist newspaper praised the United States for granting independence to the Philippines in July 1946,49 Su That dismissed the American act as a way of deceiving the world about American goodwill and humanity and deceiving small and oppressed nations about U.S. imperialism and bourgeois democracy.50 This act reportedly could damage the reputation of other imperialists (because they still wanted to re-take their colonies), but it would help the United States to achieve world hegemony (ba quyen the gioi) and would help consolidate the imperialist camp in their fight against the Soviet Union and “world democratic forces.” Bui Cong Trung, a Moscow-trained Central Committee member, argued in Su That by quoting Stalin that national liberation was inseparable from world revolution and class struggle.51 Trung was perhaps responding to an article published earlier in Chinh Nghia, the theoretical journal of the Vietnamese Nationalist Party (Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang); this article denied the relevance of class struggle for Vietnam where capitalism had not developed and all classes were impoverished.52 To those who argued that advanced capitalist societies had found ways to mitigate class struggle through mediation between management and labor, Trung gave a stinging denunciation of U.S. society: No cities match New York as a capitalist paradise! But in April 1935 in the middle of this city full of skyscrapers there were 600,000 families, a third of its population, living on donations by relief societies. In contrast, about 100 rich families in New York throw their money out the window [tha ho tieu xai phung phi]. The child of a millionaire spends on average $40,160 a year, while 2,280,000 [poor] chil-

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dren have no money to pay for their schooling. The capitalist paradise has been built on the miseries of the working masses and the exploitation of small nations. We Marxists believe that, to escape from the capitalist hell, proletariats all over the world have to unite. While both the United States and the Soviet Union were silent on Vietnam’s requests for recognition, ICP leaders denounced the United States but continued to find excuses for the Soviet Union. An example is the Moscow conference in January 1946, where Indochina was not even mentioned. An editorial in Su That warned its readers not to expect too much from this conference because the French and the Chinese were absent there.53 But why didn’t the Soviet Union bring up Indochina at the meeting? Su That speculated that the reason was the Soviet Union’s need for British and French support to deal with the American threat. Indochina could still gain, however: The Soviet Union would join the United States in occupying Japan and participating in the Far East Committee. “Of course the Soviet Union would raise its voice in matters concerning Indochina” because the Soviet Union was always loyal to the interests of weak nations and because “imperialists were not free to make rains and sow winds [lam mua lam gio] in front of the Soviet Union, a first-rate world power with anti-fascist credentials.” It would not be a bad idea, the editorial argued, if Indochina (like Korea) could be freed from colonialism and temporarily placed under an international trusteeship supervised by the Soviet Union before achieving full independence. Although the Moscow conference had not met Indochinese demands for full independence, it “indirectly solved the Indochina problem and opened up the road for Indochina to move ahead.” The ICP view of two opposing camps was further strengthened in the next two years. In this view, the “antidemocratic camp” continued to evolve with the United States as its leader and a ring of followers; this camp was getting ready to encircle the Soviet Union and destroy world revolution. The United States was seen as dominated by financial cliques who cunningly expanded their power over the entire capitalist world.54 The Marshall Plan was viewed as a means for the United States to colonize Europe.55 While French and Dutch imperialists waged wars against anticolonial movements, “the old imperialist foxes” England and the United States deceived the colonized peoples by granting mere formal independence to India, Burma, and the Philippines.56 Their moves were to avoid war while hiding behind the “puppet governments” in these countries and exploiting and oppressing their peoples. On the other hand, the “democratic camp” gradually took shape with closer collaboration between Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, as evidenced in the formation of the Cominform among European communist parties in Sep-

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tember 1947. As political conditions in France became volatile in early 1948, ICP leaders were imagining a scenario of civil war in France, the collapse of the French government and U.S. open intervention in Indochina.57 The party realized that this could be a difficult situation for Indochina if the United States, counter-revolutionary France, England, and GMD China allied to fight French communist, Chinese, Indochinese, and Southeast Asian revolutions. The nice thing about this scenario, according to the ICP, was that it offered a good opportunity for Chinese and Vietnamese revolutions to “harmonize their march forward” (hoa nhip tien buoc), and for the weak nations in Asia to build close links and unite with Western European revolutions. The democratic front would have the opportunity to eliminate imperialism, their common enemy. Similar to the “antidemocratic camp,” which included various regimes (capitalist, fascist, and military authoritarian), party leaders did not view the “democratic camp” as a monolithic bloc of similar states directed by the Soviet Union.58 In this view, the Soviet Union was a socialist state with a proletarian dictatorship. Eastern European countries, North Korea, communist-controlled China, and Vietnam were “people’s democracies” with a “dictatorship of the people led by the proletariats.” Thanks to Soviet help, the revolutionary path in these countries toward socialism might need less violence, but countries in the same camp faced different historical conditions and should pursue their own paths to socialism. The party did not hide the problems within the “democratic camp”: In response to questions about the Cominform’s criticisms of Tito, it explained that Tito was only “a straw stuck in the new democratic wheel that was rolling forward.”59 In his own speech, Ho was even blunter, calling Tito “America’s running dog” (cho san cua My).60 The case of Tito did not expose the weakness of the democratic camp; on the contrary, it indicated that the camp had “iron discipline” (ky luat sat) and would not “condone arrogant militaristic behavior” (quan phiet, tu man).61

From Cheering to Volunteering How was the Cold War actually received in Vietnam? One of the specific events that marked the beginning of the Cold War in Europe was the dramatic conflict in Berlin between the Soviet Union and Western powers. Truong Chinh’s report, worth quoting at length below, described the event with unconcealed pride of the Soviet confrontational stand: The U.S. flaunted atomic bombs to frighten the world and issued new currency notes in West Germany and West Berlin. The Soviet Union reacted strongly: West Berlin was blockaded, no cars were

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allowed in and out, hot air balloons were flown above, steel fences as high as six kilometers [sic] were erected, British and American airplanes had to be flown very high to cross these fences in order to transport relief goods into that area. The U.S. tried to coax [phinh pho] and threaten [ham doa] but the Soviet Union was as firm as a big rock [vung nhu ban thach]. British and American representatives went to Moscow, requesting meetings with Stalin and Molotov. The condition of the Soviet Union: the U.S. had to. . . . The U.S. did not comply, so “the cold war” continued. This event caused the U.S. and England to lose face. It showed the world that the Soviet Union was quite strong and that the U.S. was only bluffing [doa gia].62 Note the lack of seriousness and a slight sense of glee in the tone; the entire episode appeared like a mildly amusing imperialist farce. Did Vietnamese leaders see any dangers in the new situation? As the fortunes of Chinese communists were rising in China, ICP leaders began to imagine a scenario in which the United States would intervene directly to help the GMD stop the communists and to help the French fight both Chinese and Vietnamese communists. “We are not afraid,” Truong Chinh declared, “because if the U.S. is defeated in China, it shall be defeated in Vietnam.” The Vietnamese guerrilla army was ordered to prepare for joint operations with Chinese forces once they reached southern China.63 Underlying this military strategy was the familiar prophetic vision: “A time will come when Chinese and Vietnamese revolutions will merge into a new democracy bloc in the Far East to counter American imperialists and their stooges—French colonialists, Chinese and Vietnamese traitors.” That time arrived around early 1950. The party seized this opportunity with two parallel set of measures. One included cautious diplomatic announcements and broadcasts designed to manipulate world opinion by conveying the sense that in recognizing new Communist China, Vietnam was only seeking national independence and did not intend to join the emerging Cold War blocs. It was not clear whether the idea to proceed cautiously came from the Chinese or was their own idea because the minutes of the Standing Committee meeting mentioned only briefly the steps Vietnamese leaders planned to take: Based on suggestions from Chinese [Communist] central leadership and also due to our need to act fast, [our Party] has recommended [our] government to announce that we would want to establish diplomatic relations with all countries, then a day later to announce that we recognize the People’s Republic of China. After

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the Chinese have responded, we will transmit our announcement to the governments of Siam, Burma, India and Pakistan.64 The reception of Chinese representatives in Vietnam was also instructed to be carried out secretly and as an interparty, not intergovernment, affair. In a follow-up instruction a few days later, the party ordered government newspapers to “attack (cong kich) American imperialists, showing clearly the plots of U.S. military and financial cliques to directly intervene into Indochina.”65 Government radio stations, however, were not allowed to attack the United States directly; they were told to broadcast news of the U.S. intention to intervene in Indochina and to comment specifically that “any imperialists who wanted to mess with Indochina would fail as the U.S. did in China.” Attacking Vietnam’s neighbors such as India and Indonesia was also not permitted. Newspaper content was aimed at and limited largely to domestic consumption, whereas the party knew its radio messages were picked up abroad. The party wanted its people to hate the United States, but it was cautious not to provoke Washington into intervention. Parallel to cautious measures intended for foreign consumption were bolder steps and proposals to take full advantage of the opportunity. In the same document that explained to (high-ranking) party members the decision to recognize China, it was mentioned that the ICP had “proposed to the Chinese Communist Party to allow Vietnamese forces to enter Chinese territory to intercept and destroy fleeing GMD troops.”66 The party also planned to “propose to the Chinese a common political and military strategy in Southeast Asia and to ask the French Communist Party to coordinate action.”67 Note that collaboration was sought not only militarily but also politically, not only in Indochina but also in southern China and in Southeast Asia. Close links with communist parties in Southeast Asia were also sought.68 The party leaders’ decision to quickly link up with Chinese communists can be explained only within the context of their broader strategic and ideological conception that had always divided the world into two camps and placed the destiny of Indochina solely with the socialist camp. Three weeks after the DRV had been recognized by the Soviet bloc, the standing committee of the party noted that the absolute majority of Vietnamese were “very positive” about this event. It also pointed out that there were a few who were “worried that Indochina would become a battlefield for the democratic and anti-democratic camps to compete for influence.”69 However, these few people were dismissed as caring only about their selfish interests (quyen loi rieng). The committee justified its decision as follows:

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After the victory of the Chinese revolution, Indochina has become an outpost [tien tieu] in the anti-imperialist front in Southeast Asia. However, the world counter-revolutionary camp is not deterred [chun] by the fact that Vietnam has been recognized by [the socialist bloc]; they are even more actively executing their plot to intervene. The issue for us is that we have to act faster [tranh thu thoi gian] . . . to move on to the all-out attack phase to liberate our country and also to protect world peace, to protect the Soviet Union, to stall the plot of the warmongers, and to spread revolution to Southeast Asia.70 Given the total lack of Chinese and Soviet interest in Indochina up to 1949, and the fierce competition between the United States and Soviet Union up to then in China, DRV leaders—assuming they did not then privilege any camp— should have interpreted the victory of Chinese communists as meaning that Indochina had become an outpost in the imperialist front in Southeast Asia, not that of the anti-imperialist front. After all, the imperialists had been interested in Indochina as early as 1945, and their failure in China only raised the stakes in Indochina for them. Conceivably, the ICP could have tried, as many intellectuals advised it to do at the time, to reassure the imperialist camp that Vietnam would not ally with any bloc.71 In contrast, what ICP leaders did was to extend the anti-imperialist front into Indochina by actively contacting the Chinese and Soviets and persuading them that they could play a role in Indochina as well, that they should not easily yield Indochina to the imperialist camp, and that Indochina could do its share to help with world revolution. While the ICP leaders dismissed as selfish other Vietnamese who called for Vietnam’s neutrality vis-à-vis the two emerging blocs, they themselves started from a partisan stand in the conflict. To be fair, U.S. open and secret assistance to the French since 1946 made it clear that, even if ICP leaders had declared allegiance to the imperialist camp, the United States might not have believed them and supported them against the French. However, party documents do not reveal that anyone considered neutrality as an alternative. Clearly its leaders and members would not have accepted giving up their ideology. They had not done so when they appeared hopelessly abandoned by the revolutionary camp. Why would they do so now that they might be able to finally get support from it? To be sure, ICP leaders wanted Vietnam to be independent; however, it was not just any independence, but had to be independence with their party in charge. A potential U.S. intervention, the cost of this independence, was accepted and believed to be surmountable.

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A year later, General Secretary Truong Chinh would proudly state in his report at the Second Party Congress in 1951, the congress when the ICP reemerged as the Vietnam Workers Party, Vietnam has become one of the outposts [tien don] on the front for peace and democracy against imperialists, and has [also] been viewed by the imperialists as a strategic post on their defense line against democracy. History has entrusted the Vietnamese working class and people the responsibility to defend this outpost. The Vietnamese working class and people are determined not to let down people around the world who have placed their trust in us.72 Chinh appeared modest by giving history all the credit for the fact that Vietnam had become an outpost in the coming battles between two world camps. But he may have been trying to dodge the charge that the ICP had dragged Vietnam into the conflict between the superpowers. Regardless of his intention in this statement, there is no doubt that history played a role, but the ICP’s partisan stand and its active efforts to draw international socialist powers into Indochina should not be overlooked. The Cold War in any case allowed the ICP to accelerate the pace of their domestic revolution. International conditions had always been viewed by party leaders as closely linked to and to a critical extent determined the process of revolution in particular countries. We have seen that they viewed imperialist wars as opportunities for revolutionaries to seize power. Similarly, ICP leaders stated in 1941 that national liberation did not need to delay social revolution; permissive international conditions may allow both to take place at the same time. In 1946, at the height of the national liberation struggle, Truong Chinh continued to argue for merging the two revolutions: Now a mistaken view about the stages of the Vietnamese revolution needs to be criticized. Some people believe that our revolution has to go one step at a time: (anti-imperialist) national liberation first, then (anti-feudalist) land revolution, then socialism. This step-bystep view that strictly divides the revolution into three stages is not correct. Externally, the Soviet Union, a socialist country, has emerged victorious and the new democratic movement is growing fast. Internally, the leadership of the revolution is firmly in the hands of the proletariats and the democratic progressive forces are united. Under these historical conditions, our national liberation revolution can accomplish anti-imperialist tasks and fulfill part of our antifeudalist responsibilities73 [emphasis in original].

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How large that part of antifeudalist responsibilities must be accomplished at any particular time depended on particular international and domestic situations at that time. Note that favorable international conditions were not necessarily synonymous with the availability of international material support. Even when there was no forthcoming concrete support from the Soviet Union, some ICP leaders, of whom Chinh was the most powerful, still called for land reform measures, albeit moderate ones. At the same time, these ICP leaders held a long-term view of the revolution and always kept their eyes open for new opportunities to leapfrog ahead. By mid-1948, when Chinese Red Armies were pouring into central China after their victories in Manchuria, Truong Chinh began to call for a revived campaign to reduce rents for tenants. Rent reduction policy had been issued in 1945, but had not been seriously implemented. Chinh noted that, “If the international situation undergoes a great change favorable to the democratic camp, or if the resistance succeeds [within the near future], our Party can take advantage of the new conditions to take the land reform to one step higher [than merely rent reduction].”74 The arrival of the Cold War and the promise of concrete Chinese support would mean a great opportunity to leapfrog. As much as ICP leaders wanted to accelerate their anti-imperialist/antifeudalist/socialist revolution, the arrival of the Cold War must have been welcome by many of them, for all the costs that it might incur.

Conclusion This chapter aimed at capturing the changing worldviews of Vietnamese communist leaders and their attitudes toward the Cold War. The evidence suggests that to them the world was always sharply divided into two camps and it was in the fundamental interest of the counter-revolutionary camp that world revolution, of which the Vietnamese movement was a part, would be destroyed. While the ICP’s internal politics may remain forever obscure, the binary worldview of its top leaders was remarkably consistent. As reality did not conform to what was imagined, this worldview was modified but never abandoned. Regardless of what happened, ICP leaders throughout the period identified themselves with the revolutionary camp. At the darkest moments when no support from this camp was forthcoming, Vietnamese communists did not cease associating themselves mentally with the Soviet Union, imagining it and displaying their admiration for it. Even while they were searching frantically for alternative sources of international support, the lack of contact with the Soviet Union did not reduce but in fact enhanced their ideological loyalty. When it emerged, the Cold War only reaffirmed the binary worldview of ICP leaders. Although their nation was small and weak, they were only partially

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constrained by world events. Viewing the Cold War as a great opportunity, they took advantage of it while being fully aware of the risks and costs of their policy.75 It was China and the superpowers that decided to send aid, weapons, and armies to Vietnam, but ICP leaders did everything they could to make the initially uninterested revolutionary camp admit their small nation into its ranks. In this sense, the ICP and not China nor the superpowers brought the Cold War to Vietnam. ICP leaders were not drafted; they volunteered and brought Vietnam to war with them. While the argument in this chapter thus far has focused on ICP leaders’ attitudes toward the Cold War, the evidence here has many broad implications for scholarly debates about Vietnamese politics during this period. Five main implications can be outlined. A first obvious implication concerns the assertion in many studies that the collision between Vietnam and the United States in the 1960s was something inconceivable from the vantage point of 1945. As Robert McNamara and his collaborators wonder, “How did these two countries, with little common history and less common knowledge of each other, become during the post–World War II period the bitterest of enemies . . . ? Clearly Ho Chi Minh could not imagine this in September 1945.”76 Mark Bradley echoes the same point: From the perspective of Vietnamese and American political elites in the fall of 1945, the subsequent course of Vietnamese-American relations was surely an unimagined contingency. Neither side could have anticipated they would face each other as enemies in 1950 when the colonial war between the French and the Vietnamese was transformed into an arena of the Cold War.77 While this chapter does not address the American views, it demonstrates that Vietnamese communist leaders may have possessed little empirical knowledge about the United States, but they never lacked theoretical assumptions about the grave defects of American society and about U.S. behavior as a leading imperialist. These assumptions were informed by their two-camp worldview in which the American capitalist system was unjust and cruel in contrast to the just and progressive Soviet system. In addition, the United States was a clever and dangerous enemy of world revolution, whereas the Soviet Union was its savior; mutually destructive conflict between the two camps was inevitable. As shown in newspaper articles and internal party documents drafted and discussed with all seriousness by all top party leaders, Vietnamese communists harbored these assumptions long before 1945 and continued to hold them, even during late 1944 to early 1945 when the United States appeared to be on their side.

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However, even if the above assertion is clearly mistaken when applied to the ICP as a whole, one wonders whether it may be true for Ho Chi Minh. This concerns another longstanding view in the literature that describes Ho as a pragmatic politician in contrast to his radical “lieutenants.” Ho’s pragmatism is unquestioned in his practical decisions such as, in the period of interest here, the pursuit of a nationalist coalition, the negotiations with France, and the dissolution of the ICP. However, one should not conflate his pragmatism in policy prescriptions with his deep beliefs. Here lies the second implication of this reflection. Ho was never as interested in theoretical questions as Truong Chinh was, but the evidence here indicates no noticeable difference between him and his comrades in their fundamental worldview. There was little disparity between the worldview as written in the Seventh and Eighth (and subsequent) Plenum resolutions. The Truong Chinh–edited Su That was indeed more fiery and dogmatic than the Ho-edited Viet Nam Doc Lap, which apparently suggests differences between these two leaders. However, to a great extent these differences were reflections of the different target audiences (the former targeted Hanoi intellectuals, and the latter relatively uneducated peasants and merchants) and the corresponding appropriate styles. As an article quoted above exemplified, Viet Nam Doc Lap devoted significant effort to project a positive image of “Russia” and communism not in doctrinal terms but in language that ordinary Vietnamese could understand. On balance, the baseline of the two-camp worldview was consistent throughout with Ho (in 1941–1942, since late 1944) or without Ho (before 1941 and in 1942 to 1944). Given that Ho chaired or participated in party meetings and helped draft party resolutions during some of the periods examined here, it is hard to imagine that he disagreed fundamentally with these resolutions. Disagreements perhaps had more to do with policies and tactics at particular points, but not with the question of, in the most fundamental sense, who would be true friends and foes. The third implication concerns an influential hypothesis advanced by Huynh Kim Khanh in his path-breaking study on Vietnamese communism. Khanh writes that the French repression of the ICP in 1940 “helped change the Party’s direction. In addition to the party’s isolation from the international Communist movement, the elimination of most of the internationalist-oriented leaders, who had complied closely with whatever line Moscow espoused, facilitated the reascendancy of leaders who had stressed the creative adaptation of Marxism-Leninism to the sociopolitical conditions of Vietnam.”78 While it is true that Ho’s taking control of the ICP in 1941 was made easier by the French, this does not mean that internationalism died with Le Hong Phong, Nguyen Thi Minh Khai, Nguyen Van Cu, Ha Huy Tap, and Phan Dang Luu, the ICP

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leaders captured and executed in 1940–1941. Defined as a strong sense of ideological affinity with the international communist movement that began with Marx and of which the Soviet Union was only a component—albeit the most important one—internationalism was not reserved only for those leaders who had been to the Soviet Union. In fact, the Soviet system may have been more attractive as imagined from afar; those who had never been there may have been more idealistic than those who had. There are reasons to believe that ICP leaders who survived French repression, including Le Duan, Hoang Quoc Viet, Pham Hung, Truong Chinh, Nguyen Luong Bang, Le Duc Tho, Bui Cong Trung, Nguyen Duy Trinh, Nguyen Chi Thanh, Pham Van Dong, Vo Nguyen Giap, and Le Van Luong, to name only the best known, were just as internationalist as those executed although none of them except Trung had been to the Soviet Union. Many among the surviving leaders, such as Duan, Trung, Dong, Hung, and Luong, worked closely or spent years in prison with their fallen comrades. All received their first ideological training in the early 1930s, mostly in French prisons, although the unusually slavish Stalinism of the French Communist Party in the interwar years perhaps helped shape their thinking.79 French repression opened up a temporary leadership vacuum for Ho to step in, but in fact hardened the internationalism held by most ICP surviving leaders.80 To the extent that these leaders wielded any influence, and collectively it is safe to assume that they wielded more influence than Ho on most matters, the post-1940 application of Marxism-Leninism to Vietnam would become less “creative,” contrary to what Khanh argues. The evidence of this radical internationalism is undeniable in the pages of Su That published in late 1945 at the height of the nationalist movement and in party documents the above men drafted and debated.81 This chapter thus hopes to correct the dual tendency in the literature to slight Vietnamese internationalism and focus exclusively on Ho as if he and the ICP were one and the same.82 The fourth implication involves another common portrayal of Vietnamese communist leaders in the literature as nationalists first and communists second. The obsession with these seemingly dichotomous labels apparently originated from the debate between supporters of and opponents to U.S. involvement in Vietnam in the 1960s. The former justified the war by arguing that Vietnamese communism was a tool of Soviet and Chinese ambition, while the latter claimed that Vietnamese communism was fused with and tamed by indigenous nationalism.83 Whether they supported the war or not, many respected scholars have adopted or contributed to the second view. For example, Duiker84asserts that “communists, like other nationalist groups . . . , wanted above all to find a solution to the national problem. . . . Marxism, like democ-

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racy or fascism, was a tool in this process” (emphasis in original). Kahin85 agrees that Vietnamese communist leaders were “men in whom the strength of nationalism decisively overshadowed any propensity to follow some line dictated in the Kremlin.” Herring,86 the author of a popular college text on the Vietnam War now in its fourth edition, notes, “The [Indochinese] revolutions were not inspired by Moscow, and although the Soviet Union and China at times sought to control them, their capacity to do so was limited by their lack of military and especially naval power and by the strength of local nationalism.” According to these scholars, the strength of Vietnamese nationalism was further enhanced by a combination of traditional Sino–Vietnamese enmity and the DRV’s isolation from the international communist centers in the 1945– 1949 period. Only after U.S. policymakers mistakenly rebuffed the DRV was the ICP forced to turn to China and the Soviet Union for support.87 The United States, in other words, pushed hapless Vietnamese communists to join the Soviet camp. But as Bradley argues, even “if the Vietnamese were anxious to gain Chinese support after 1949, they still hoped to retain the flexible revolutionary nationalist character of their foreign policy and to remain apart from the emerging bipolar structure of the international system.”88 The evidence here suggests that these scholars have taken the labels “nationalists” and “communists” too seriously while neglecting exploration of the worldviews and actions of Vietnamese communists on their own terms. While they correctly reject the notion that Vietnamese communists were Soviet or Chinese puppets, they fall into the trap of making their arguments based on the same false dichotomy imposed by outside observers. Vietnamese communists did not think of national and class interests in contradictory terms. Upon reading volumes of party documents,89 one gets the sense that the question for them was not posed at the abstract level of blanket terms such as “nationalism” or “communism,” but rather at the strategic and tactical level, namely at which stage certain slogans were most appropriate. The fact that they emphasized national goals at one stage does not by itself prove that these were their end goals. Vietnamese leaders were not subservient to the Soviet Union or China, but this does not mean that they could not choose to be loyal to the broadly defined international communist cause on their own. They were at one point pragmatic in their tactical foreign policy maneuvers, but these measures must be separated from their hidden strategic thinking and worldview, which was dominated by the themes of domestic social revolution and world revolution. The view shared by the above scholars shows that Vietnamese leaders were capable of independent thinking, but it denies their extraordinary ability to imagine the impossible, to gamble the destiny of Indochina on a nonexistent revolutionary camp, to keep the faith regardless of circumstances, and even-

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tually to secure a larger role in international politics than the status of a small and weak Vietnam could grant them. To say that Vietnamese communists thought of Marxism merely as a tool, that their revolution was not inspired by Moscow, that they were forced by circumstances against their will to align with the Soviet bloc, and that they were loyal to the Soviet Union only when there were contacts and aid, not only contradicts the evidence here but also denigrates their revolutionary commitments and efforts, however disastrous the consequences of their socialist revolution would prove to be for Vietnam from the vantage point of the twenty-first century. The final implication concerns the party documents that form the core of this essay. Researchers of Vietnamese foreign policy during the 1940s are confronted by two contradictory sets of sources. On the one hand are such statements such as Ho’s declaration of independence and the Viet Minh’s programs that spoke of the nation and repeatedly invoked Vietnamese historical heroes such as Tran Hung Dao and Le Loi. On the other hand are internal party documents where such heroes never appeared; in their places were Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. The dilemma is not resolved by incorporating all sources into the analysis because one set is so different from the other. If the thoughts of Vietnamese leaders were really a mixture of ideas about the nation and world revolution, which is conceivable,90 both Tran Hung Dao and Stalin should have appeared side by side in both sets of documents. They didn’t. One is left with two other possibilities. First, it is possible that the two sets of documents were produced by different leaders whose beliefs differed and who were not coordinating their messages. Different writing styles clearly indicated that they were written by different authors, but given the close-knit structure of the ICP leadership, lack of coordination is unlikely. Alternatively, the contradiction between the two sets may be deliberate: One set targeted the broadest audience possible and the other a limited circle of party leaders. One was aimed for public relations or propaganda purposes and the other for internal debate and consumption. Evidence of the intention and ability to manipulate public opinion has been shown above in the case of clever propaganda measures taken by the DRV when it established relations with China and the Soviet Union in 1950; these maneuvers would confuse such well-informed outside observers as George Kahin for decades. If the hypothesis of deliberate contradiction is true, it follows that scholars must use the two sets of documents differently. The first set is valuable as source material for analyses of ICP techniques and skills in propaganda and mass mobilization, whereas the second set serves for research on the ICP’s genuine views and calculations. The first set is examined for popular arguments and forms of speech and the second set for content. Misuse would lead researchers to wrong answers.

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Last but not least, the value of these party documents is not limited to the time they were written because they have been and are still used as indoctrination materials today. No longer abstract considerations when originally written, they have long become institutionalized and even mythologized. Subsequent generations of Vietnamese communist leaders often knew about the outside world primarily through these documents, which they were required to read, discuss, memorize, transmit down and out, and reproduce in their own words. Based on these documents, generations of Vietnam’s court historians have woven a seamless historiography of the party’s central role in modern Vietnamese history to be taught to students from primary to graduate school. In fact, a recent study of Vietnam’s foreign policy (in the context of Sino–Vietnamese relations) up to the late 1990s shows that although the Cold War has long ended, the dichotomous worldview remains deeply ingrained in the minds of many top party and government leaders.91

Notes 1. For example, see George Kahin and John Lewis, The United States in Vietnam (New York: Dial Press, 1967); William Duiker, The Rise of Nationalism in Vietnam, 1900–1941 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976); Gareth Porter, “Vietnam and the Socialist Camp: Center of Periphery?” in William Turley, ed., Vietnamese Communism in Comparative Perspective (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1980); George Kahin, Intervention: How America Became Involved in Vietnam (New York: Knopf, 1986); Marilyn Young, The Vietnam Wars, 1945–1990 (New York: HarperPerennial, 1990); Robert McNamara, James Blight, and Robert Brigham, Argument without End (New York: Public Affairs, 1999); Mark Bradley, Imagining Vietnam and America: The Making of Postcolonial Vietnam, 1919–1950 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); and George Herring, America’s Longest War, 4th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002). 2. Which particular leaders were more committed to this worldview is a matter that can be settled definitively with the opening up of the Vietnamese Communist Party’s archives. Many documents examined here were authored by Truong Chinh, generalsecretary of the ICP during the 1941–1956 period, and arguably the most powerful leader rivaling Ho Chi Minh in the ICP leadership. Other documents (party resolutions) were jointly authored. My research over eight months at the National Archive III and the Revolutionary Museum in Hanoi did not uncover any information on internal party debates. 3. Stein Tonnesson, The Vietnamese Revolution of 1945 (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1991), 115; David Marr, Vietnam 1945: The Quest for Power (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 160, 167–68. Besides Ho, new participants at the Eighth Plenum included Phung Chi Kien, Vu Anh, Hoang Van Hoan (some sessions), and two representatives from central and south Vietnam who were not clearly identified. 4. Thu was captured and executed by the French in 1944. When the ICP re-emerged as the Vietnamese Workers’ Party in 1951, its Central Committee elected a Political

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Bureau listed in original order as follows: Ho Chi Minh, Truong Chinh, Le Duan, Hoang Quoc Viet, Vo Nguyen Giap, Pham Van Dong, and Nguyen Chi Thanh (Le Van Luong was an alternate member). Van Kien Dang Toan Tap (Collection of Party Documents, hereafter VKDTT) (Hanoi: Chinh Tri Quoc Gia), 12: 521. 5. The only exception is Hoang Quoc Viet, who mentioned in his memoir that he was in France briefly in 1930. See Hoang Quoc Viet, Con Duong Theo Bac (Following Uncle Ho) (Hanoi: Thanh Nien, 1990). 6. “Nghi quyet cua Hoi nghi Trung uong” (Resolution of the Central Committee Plenum), November 6–9, 1940, VKDTT, 7: 20. 7. Ibid., 24. 8. “Cach mang the gioi” in original. The use of the term suggested the conception of a single proletarian revolutionary movement. 9. VKDTT, 7: 32. 10. Ibid., 33. 11. Ibid.. 34. 12. Ibid.. 71–73. 13. Ibid., 74. 14. “Trung Uong Hoi Nghi Lan Thu Tam” (The Eighth Central Committee Plenum), May 1941, VKDTT, 7: 98. 15. Ibid., 100. 16. Ibid., 102. 17. Ibid., 109–10. 18. Ibid., 113–14. 19. Ibid., 115–17. 20. Bradley, Imagining Vietnam and America, 111. 21. Ibid., 120–21. 22. “Phai ung ho Lien Bang Xo Viet” (We have to support the Soviet Union), October 31, 1941, VKDTT, 7: 203–5. See also “Nghi quyet cua Hoi nghi can bo toan xu Bac ky” (Resolution of the Tonkin Cadre Meeting), September 25–27, 1941, VKDTT, 7: 189–90. 23. B.V., “Nga la nuoc the nao?” Viet Nam Doc Lap, n. 126, July 11, 1942. In the introduction to a recently published volume that contains the entire collection of Viet Nam Doc Lap at the Revolutionary Museum in Hanoi, its director Pham Mai Hung writes that Ho founded the journal in August 1941 and from then until August 1942 when he left for China, he was its editor-in-chief, main contributor, often illustrator, and printing worker. Bao Tang Cach Mang Viet Nam, Bao Viet Nam Doc Lap, 1941– 1945 (Hanoi: Lao Dong, 2000). The style of this article suggests that it was likely to have been written by Ho. 24. “Cuoc chien tranh Thai binh duong va trach nhiem can kip cua Dang” (The Pacific War and the urgent tasks facing the Party), December 21, 1941, VKDTT, 7: 238–53. 25. Ibid., 243–44. 26. This was the result of the meeting between Stalin and Churchill in May 1942. 27. “Nghi quyet cua Ban Thuong vu Trung uong,” (Resolution of the Standing Committee of the Central Committee), February 25–28, 1943, VKDTT, 7: 272–315. The resolution stated that a Central Committee meeting was needed, given the new important developments, but convening such a meeting was not feasible.

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28. Ibid., 275. Emphasis added. 29. Ibid., 274. 30. Ibid., 279. 31. Ibid., 278. 32. Ibid., 302–4. 33. “Day manh cuoc chien tranh chong phat xit xam luoc” (Stepping up the fight against the fascists), November 12–13, 1943, VKDTT, 7: 322–26. 34. One wonders whether this Comintern example and the instrumental logic used here to explain it would help Ho later to justify the decision to dissolve the ICP in November 1945. 35. Cuu Quoc, November 1944, 18. (Copy courtesy of the Revolutionary Museum in Hanoi.) 36. “Nghi quyet Hoi nghi quan su Bac ky” (Resolution of Northern Regional Committee on military issues), April 15–20, 1945, VKDTT, 7: 382. It can be assumed that the view in this resolution reflected the views of central leaders. 37. “Nghi quyet cua Toan quoc Hoi nghi Dang Cong san Dong duong” (Resolution of the National Party Conference), August 14–15, 1945, VKDTT, 7: 423–33. 38. William Duiker, Ho Chi Minh: A Life (New York: Hyperion, 2000), 282–303; Sophie Quinn-Judge, Ho Chi Minh: The Missing Years, 1919–1941 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 221–35. 39. See Christopher Goscha, “Courting Diplomatic Disaster? The Difficult Integration of Vietnam into the Internationalist Communist Movement (1945–1950),” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 1, nos. 1–2 (February–August 2006), 59–103. French historians have also suggested that many leaders such as Truong Chinh and Hoang Quoc Viet were critical of Ho’s policy to negotiate with the French. See Phillipe Devillers and Jean Lacouture, End of a War (New York: Praeger, 1969), 11. 40. Bradley, Imagining Vietnam and America, 127–33. 41. Ibid., 151. 42. “Chi thi cua Ban Chap hanh Trung uong ve khang chien kien quoc” (Instruction of the Central Committee about resistance and nation-building), November 25, 1945, VKDTT, 8: 21–34. 43. In a subsequent instruction issued after the Sino–French agreement to let French troops replace Chinese GMD troops in North Vietnam, it was similarly claimed that England and the United States wanted the French and the Dutch to re-take control of Indochina and Indonesia so that they could devote their efforts to encircling the Soviet Union. “Tinh hinh va chu truong” (The current situation and our policy), March 3, 1946, VKDTT, 8: 41. 44. “Chi thi cua Ban Chap hanh,” op. cit., 21–22. 45. Ibid., 21. See also the editorial in Su That, January 17–20, 1946. 46. Su That, December 5, 1945. As the ICP dissolved itself, it closed Co Giai Phong (Liberation Flag), the Party’s journal up to then, and started Su That. Su That was under Truong Chinh’s direct supervision. See Quang Dam: Nha Bao, Hoc Gia (Hanoi: Lao Dong, 2002), 29. 47. “Nghi quyet cua Hoi nghi Can bo Trung uong” (Resolution of the Central Cadre Conference), July 31–August 1, 1946, VKDTT, 8: 99. 48. Tran Quoc Bao, “Van de Quoc Cong o Tau va chinh sach My” (The GMD– Communist conflict in China and U.S. policy), Su That, July 5, 1946.

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49. Dan Thanh (The People’s Voice) (Hanoi), July 4, 1946. 50. Tran Quoc Bao, “Y nghia doc lap cua Phi luat tan” (The meaning of Filipino independence), Su That, July 12, 1946, 5. 51. B.C.T., “Thuyet dau tranh giai cap va van de dan toc” (The theory of class struggle and the national issue), Su That, July 5 and 12, 1946. 52. To Khanh, “Giai cap tranh dau hay dan toc tranh dau?” (Class struggle or national struggle?), Chinh Nghia (The Just Cause) (Hanoi), June 3, 1946. 53. “Hoi nghi Mac tu khoa ve van de Dong Duong,” Su That, January 12, 1946. 54. “Nghi quyet Hoi nghi Can bo Trung uong” (Resolution of Central Cadre Conference), April 3–6, 1947, VKDTT, 8: 173–75. 55. “Nghi quyet Hoi nghi Trung uong mo rong” (Resolution of Expanded Central Committee Conference), January 15–17, 1948, VKDTT, 9: 16. 56. “Chung ta chien dau cho doc lap va dan chu” (We fight for independence and democracy), Truong Chinh’s speech at the Fifth Cadre Conference, August 8–16, 1948, Ban Chap hanh Lien khu Dang bo Lien khu X, 1948, 15–18. 57. Ibid., 18–19. 58. Ibid., 6–12. 59. Ibid., 20. 60. Ho Chi Minh, Bao cao chanh tri (Political Report), speech at the Second Party Congress in 1951 (Trung Uong Cuc Mien Nam, 1952), 52. Note that this statement together with praises for Mao’s thought and guidance that appeared in the original speech are deleted from the same speech published in VKDTT, 12: 31. 61. “Chung ta chien dau cho doc lap va dan chu,” op. cit. 62. Truong Chinh, “Tich cuc cam cu va chuan bi tong phan cong” (Zealously holding off the enemy and preparing for the general attack phase), January 14, 1949, VKDTT, 10: 29–30. 63. Ibid., 36–37, 53. 64. “Quyet nghi cua Ban Thuong vu Trung uong” (The decision of the Standing Committee), January 15–16, 1950, VKDTT, 11: 11. The DRV’s clever arrangement succeeded to confuse even informed observers for a long time. Nearly forty years later, Kahin, in Intervention (1986, 35), still argued that “[n]ot having yet received diplomatic recognition from any country, the DRV leaders felt the urgent need to break out of their isolation, and on January 14, 1950, they appealed worldwide to all governments for diplomatic recognition. Four days later, once Hanoi had recognized Mao’s government (on the 15th), Peking reciprocated; and on January 30, the Soviet Union followed suit.” 65. “Chi thi cua Ban Thuong vu Trung uong ve viec tuyen truyen chinh sach ngoai giao cua Chinh phu ta” (The instruction of the Standing Committee on propaganda about our foreign policy), January 18, 1950, VKDTT, 11: 16. 66. “Quyet nghi cua Ban Thuong vu Trung uong,” op. cit., 11. 67. “Nghi quyet cua Thuong vu Trung uong” (The resolution of the Standing Committee), February 4, 1950, VKDTT, 11: 223. 68. “Nghi quyet cua Hoi nghi Toan quoc lan thu ba” (Resolution of the Third National Party Conference), January 21–February 3, 1950, VKDTT, 11: 218. 69. “Nghi quyet cua Thuong vu Trung uong,” February 4, 1950, op. cit., 222–23. In another document, Party leaders also discussed the attitude of “pro-American” intellectuals such as Hoang Xuan Han (a former minister in the Tran Trong Kim gov-

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ernment) and Nguyen Manh Ha (the first Minister of Economy in the Viet Minh government in 1945) who wanted the ICP not to ally with any camp for fear of Vietnam becoming the battlefield of a Third World War. “Tinh hinh cac Lien Khu trong ba thang 1, 2, 3 nam 1950” (The situation in the Interzones during the first quarter of 1950), n.d., VKDTT, 11: 271. 70. Ibid., 223. 71. See footnote 68 above. 72. “Hoan thanh giai phong dan toc, phat trien dan chu nhan dan, tien toi chu nghia xa hoi” (Finishing national liberation, developing people’s democracy and marching forward to socialism), February 1951, VKDTT, 11: 47. Italics added. 73. “Cach mang thang Tam: Trien vong cua Cach mang Viet nam” (The August Revolution: The Prospects of Vietnam’s Revolution), Su That, September 7, 1946. 74. “Chung ta chien dau cho doc lap va dan chu” (We fight for independence and democracy), Truong Chinh’s speech at the Fifth Cadre Conference, August 8–16, 1948 (Ban chap hanh Lien khu Dang bo Lien khu X, 1948, 80–85). 75. Vietnamese communists were not alone in seeing the Cold War as a great opportunity. As Odd Arne Westad concludes in his study of Chinese communist foreign policy, “while anticolonial insurgents of the late 19th and early 20th centuries had little hope of forming alliances with a foreign power, the bipolarity and the scope of the Cold War conflict opened the door for Third world rebels to exploit the international great power system for their own purposes.” See Westad, Cold War and Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 178. 76. Robert McNamara, James Blight, and Robert Brigham, Argument without End (New York: Public Affairs, 1999), 77. 77. Bradley, Imagining Vietnam and America, 6. 78. Huynh Kim Khanh, Vietnamese Communism 1925–1945 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), 256. George Kahin repeats this line of argument in his Intervention (1986, 10). 79. I’m indebted to Peter Zinoman for this point. 80. In The Colonial Bastille: A History of Imprisonment in Vietnam, 18962–1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 4, Peter Zinoman argues that the Indochinese colonial prison “founded to quell political dissent and maintain law and order,” in fact became “a site that nurtured the growth of communism, nationalism, and anticolonial resistance.” In Imagining Vietnam and America (2000, 40), Bradley also suggests that colonial prisons radicalized many Vietnamese communist leaders. 81. This character of Vietnamese communism is also confirmed in recent studies that look at politics both during the same period and in post-1954 North Vietnam. See, for example, Kim Ninh, A World Transformed: The Politics of Culture in Revolutionary Vietnam, 1945–1965 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002); and Patricia Pelley, Postcolonial Vietnam: New Histories of the National Past (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002). 82. In Imagining Vietnam and America, Bradley goes further than most in incorporating Vietnamese views but his discussion of socialist internationalism (8 pages) is much briefer than those of neo-Confucianism and social Darwinism (16 pages) and Vietnamese radicalism in general (12 pages). Whereas the index has 62 entries under Ho Chi Minh, there are 52 for Truong Chinh (14), Pham Van Dong (16) and Vo Nguyen Giap (22) combined. An exception to this tendency is Bernard Fall’s astute analysis of

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Truong Chinh’s views included in the translation of two of Chinh’s best works in 1945–1950. See Truong Chinh, A Primer for Revolution: The Communist Takeover in Vietnam (New York: Praeger, 1963). 83. For a review of the scholarship on the war, see Robert McMahon, “U.S.– Vietnamese Relations: A Historiographical Survey,” in Warren Cohen, ed., Pacific Passage (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996). 84. William Duiker, The Rise of Nationalism in Vietnam, 1900–1941 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976), 17. 85. George Kahin, Intervention: How America Became Involved in Vietnam (New York: Knopf, 1986), 27. 86. George C. Herring, America’s Longest War, 4th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002), 21–22. 87. Kahin, Intervention, 22, 35. 88. Bradley, Imagining Vietnam and America, 181. 89. The newly released forty-one volumes of Van Kien Dang Toan Tap (Hanoi: Chinh Tri Quoc Gia, 2002). 90. If Indonesia’s Muslim leaders such as “Red Haji” Misbach could believe in both Marx and Mohammed, it is not unthinkable for Vietnamese revolutionaries to embrace Tran Hung Dao and Stalin at the same time. See Takashi Shiraishi, An Age in Motion: Popular Radicalism in Java, 1912–1926 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990). 91. Vu Hong Lam, “Lich su quan he Viet-Trung nhin tu goc do dai chien luoc” (The history of Sino–Vietnamese relations viewed from the perspective of grand strategy), Thoi Dai Moi (New Era), no. 2 (July 2004) (available at http://www.thoidai.org/ 200402_VHLam.htm).

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8. Choosing between the Two Vietnams: 1950 and Southeast Asian Shifts in the International System Christopher E. Goscha

In Indo-China also[,] the recognition of Ho Chi Minh’s Government by Russia and China and of Bao Dai’s Government by the U.S.A. and U.K., etc., lays the seeds of major conflict. —Jawaharlal Nehru, February 6, 19501

Jawaharlal Nehru could not have known just how prescient his words were that day. The Sino–Soviet decision to recognize Ho Chi Minh’s Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) in January 1950 ushered in the Cold War on the diplomatic front to non-communist South and Southeast Asia. As the communist bloc lined up behind Mao Zedong and Josef Stalin in support of Ho Chi Minh, the Americans, flanked by the British and the French, countered with a diplomatic offensive designed to garner “free world” and non-communist Asian support for the counter-revolutionary Associated State of Vietnam, led by Bao Dai and seconded by the French. Most accounts of this Cold War diplomatic battle over the “two Vietnams” in 1950 focus on the Western and especially the American and British sides of this question.2 In this chapter, I take up two less-studied Asian angles of this question in order to show how this pressure to choose between the Vietnams I would like to thank Andrew Hardy at the Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient (Hanoi) and the Groupe d’Etudes sur le Viet Nam Contemporain (SciencesPo, Paris) for supporting my research in New Delhi and Hanoi. My thanks, too, to David Marr, Fredrik Logevall, Mark Lawrence, David Chandler, Peter Zinoman, and Tuong Vu for their very helpful comments on a draft of this chapter.

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gave rise to two important if little studied shifts in the international system. In the first part of this essay, I break with standard accounts of the DRV’s foreign policy to examine how ranking Vietnamese communists welcomed Sino– Soviet recognition of the DRV in January 1950 and willingly aligned their Vietnam with the internationalist communist world as its Indochinese cutting edge in Southeast Asia. Rather than cast Vietnamese communists as “victims” of the Cold War, I accord Vietnamese communists agency, arguing that they were active players in this internationalist reconfiguration of the Asian part of the international system. In the second part of this essay, I examine how noncommunist, newly decolonized Asian states such as India, Burma, and Indonesia, refused to choose between Ho Chi Minh and Bao Dai in 1950. Unlike the DRV, by refusing to join one side of the Cold War or the other, these Asian states implicitly set the Asian part of the southern part of the international system on an early and increasingly “non-aligned” trajectory. Both of these shifts —one of alignment with the communist bloc, the other a “third way,” nonaligned one moving between the communist blocs and Western blocs—occurred against the historical backdrop of decolonization. Understanding how these two trajectories intertwined with decolonization is one of the subplots running through my analysis of both of these Asian shifts in the international system. This was certainly true for communist Vietnam.

“Leaning to One Side”: Vietnam’s Revolutionary Vision of Southeast Asia “Diplomatic Struggle” and National Liberation The DRV was fighting a war of national liberation against the French since the outbreak of war in southern Vietnam in September 1945. Like their Indonesian and Algerian counterparts, Vietnamese nationalists led by Ho Chi Minh used diplomacy as an important means to realize Vietnamese independence.3 At the international level, Ho turned to the Allied powers in the wake of the Japanese defeat, appealing above all to the anticolonialism of the United States and the Soviet Union. The Vietnamese also turned to the emerging postcolonial states of Asia, opening representative offices in Bangkok, Rangoon, New Delhi, and later in Jakarta. It was vital to reaching the world outside in order to make known the Vietnamese independence struggle; to launch propaganda drives and influence international public opinion; and to make vital contacts with other governments and international organizations, such as the United Nations. Since 1941, Ho Chi Minh had put proletarian internationalism and social revolution on hold in favor of creating the Viet Minh nationalist front and realizing Viet-

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namese independence. In November 1945, not only did Ho Chi Minh preside over “dissolution” of the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP), but his government also adopted a foreign policy toward Asia and the rest of the “South” that stressed anticolonialism and collaboration with the “small and weak nations around the globe” (cac nhuoc-tieu dan-toc tren hoan-cau).4 In late 1945, for example, Ho called on the Indonesians to join in the creation of a Southeast Asian anticolonialist federation. In March 1946, a Vietnamese editorial lauded Nehru’s plans for building an Asian Union, one that would uplift the “small and weak nations” in Asia (nhuoc tieu A-Chau).5 A year later, keen to exploit Nehru’s pan-Asianism and India’s newly won independence, the DRV sent representatives to the Inter-Relations Conference organized and hosted by Nehru.6 While the DRV succeeded in making the Vietnamese struggle better known abroad, tangible success on the diplomatic front remained limited between 1945 and 1950. Despite Roosevelt’s anticolonialism and wartime interest in confiscating Indochina from the French, his successor, Harry Truman, was focused on the Cold War and Sino–Soviet advances across Eurasia, and was much more interested in maintaining French goodwill in Europe than forcing decolonization in Indochina. Even Stalin was less interested in supporting Vietnamese decolonization than in promoting his own geopolitical interests in France and Europe (see chapter five in this volume). The Soviets never replied to Ho’s early letters either.7 Newly independent Asian states could or would do little more to help the Vietnamese. Part of the problem was that the Americans were not the only ones worried by the DRV’s communist hue. The Indonesians, for example, shied away from the DRV’s diplomatic overtures, fearful that its communist core would jeopardize their own decolonization. The Indonesian prime minister, Sutan Sjahrir, explained his rejection of Vietnamese requests to create a Southeast Asian regional grouping after World War II as follows: “Ho Chi Minh is facing the French who will resist him for a very long time. Ho is also dependent on the support of the Communists, who are very powerful in the independence movement which is not the case with us. . . . If we ally ourselves with Ho Chi Minh, we will weaken ourselves and delay independence.”8 And despite the lofty words, in the end, all that Pandit Nehru would offer the Vietnamese nationalist movement was “moral” support. He refused to grant military aid, for fear of jeopardizing Indian negotiations with the French over Pondicherry and widening the conflict. Nor did he effectively bring up the question in the United Nations. Nehru certainly never seriously entertained the idea of recognizing the DRV diplomatically before 1950, if not 1954.9 In short, the UN, the United States, India, Indonesia, and even the Soviet Union never seriously took up the Vietnamese cause. As a sympathetic Indian newspaper put it in mid-1948:

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For the past two and a half years a nation of 22 million has been fighting alone. No other country has raised a finger to arrive at a just settlement. Vietnam, the Cinderella of South East Asia, is fighting unhonoured, unwept and unsung.10 In striking contrast to Indonesian republicans fighting the Dutch effectively on the diplomatic front, the DRV’s foreign policy was largely a failure up to January 1950. Whereas American, UN, and even Indian pressure on the Dutch provided Indonesian nationalists with a diplomatic victory in 1949, Chinese diplomatic recognition in January 1950 saved the DRV from what might well have been devastating national and international marginalization at a crucial juncture in the battle to keep the DRV alive.11

Ideology and Vietnamese Communist Foreign Policy This perilous isolation helps to explain why Vietnamese communists were willing to lean to the communist side in January 1950. Chinese diplomatic recognition broke their diplomatic isolation and legitimated their national and revolutionary struggle at the international level. Militarily, it opened the way to large amounts of aid and training, which would allow the Vietnamese to move beyond guerrilla warfare in order to take the battle to the French across the Indochinese battlefield. Moreover, the Chinese scored a major victory for the Vietnamese by ensuring that Stalin and all the “new democracies” in Eastern Europe would follow their lead by recognizing the DRV. In short, Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnam had suddenly taken on real international life, something which even Léon Pignon, the French mastermind of the Bao Dai solution, had to concede.12 Communist bloc recognition, however, also placed Vietnamese communist nationalists on a Cold War fault line now reaching into Southeast Asia. Within weeks of Moscow and Beijing’s diplomatic recognition of the DRV, Washington and London came down in favor of Bao Dai’s Associated State of Vietnam. The war for the two Vietnams was truly internationalized from this point. But there was more to it than national interest and geopolitics. Vietnamese communists also chose to ally their Vietnam with the communist bloc in early 1950 for ideological reasons. Neither diplomatic recognition nor the Cold War was simply forced upon them; it was welcomed, perhaps not by all but certainly by many in the ICP. Surprisingly little, however, has been written about the importance of ideology as a driving force in Vietnamese communist foreign policy and perceptions. Much of the existing literature has tended to emphasize the importance of Vietnam’s vulnerable security, its timeless patriotic resistance to foreigners from ancient times to the present, or missed opportu-

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nities by the Americans, whereas those studies dealing with ideology in Vietnamese foreign policymaking have tended either to over-blow or minimize it. Worse, following the violent meltdown of Asian internationalism during the “third” Indochinese war in 1979, Asian communist historiographies have preferred to downplay ideology altogether in favor of pushing nationalist and “resistance” readings of the past. Periods of internationalist collaboration, such as in the late 1940s and early 1950s, tend to vanish under the weight of the troubled 1980s.13 While it would be wrong to ignore the importance of “history,” “tradition,” or “security” for our understanding of Vietnamese foreign policy, such approaches, applied in essentializing and anachronistic ways, do not allow for modifications in regional relations and mutual perceptions based on changing historical conditions, such as the entry, adoption, and adaptation of new ideological faiths. Communism also brought Vietnamese, Chinese, and other anticolonialists into a larger revolutionary family and offered a new way of viewing international and inter-Asian relations. And the genesis of this “revolutionary” shift in the international system predates World War II. Indeed, by the 1930s, Chinese and Vietnamese communists had already begun to imagine themselves, in varying ways, at the center of a new, wider revolutionary world in Asia. Not only would the Chinese and the Vietnamese liberate their own countries, but they also felt a duty to help the “weak and oppressed” elsewhere in Asia (nhuoc tieu and ap buc in Vietnamese). If Mao was convinced that Chinese liberation would “have a deep influence on the revolutions in the East and throughout the world,”14 the Vietnamese also began to see their liberation movement as part of a wider Asian revolutionary renewal. Of particular importance for the Vietnamese was bringing revolutionary civilization to Laos, Cambodia, and the highlands of Vietnam.15 A new mental landscape of the region began to take form, one which would influence the evolution of Chinese and Vietnamese revolutionary foreign policies from the start. As Michael Hunt notes for China, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) “clung to this role as the leading Asian power down to the founding of the PRC and beyond— with explicit approval, even encouragement from Moscow.”16 Vietnamese communists likewise kept their Indochinese revolutionary roadmap within hand’s reach and began to think in even wider terms from the late 1940s as Asia indeed Vietnam assumed central importance in the globalization of the Cold War. Like Mao Zedong, Truong Chinh, the provisional general secretary of the ICP, saw 1950 as marking an major shift in the international system.17 The enthusiasm that had gripped Mao when he came to power and looked to the world outside seems to have captivated Vietnamese leaders, too. To Truong Chinh

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and others, international recognition and support meant that the DRV was no longer the lost “Cinderella of South East Asia”—“unhonoured, unwept and unsung.” Vietnam was now at the very center of monumental change and renovation, at both the national and international levels. The humiliation of the colonial past seemed as if it could finally be swept away in favor of a new international order in which the DRV would occupy an important position. Vietnam embodied the very phenomena of revolution and decolonization in the international system. The DRV’s double vision of the region, the world, and itself, distinguished it from the Indonesian and Algerian nationalist movements, however. While Vietnamese communists shared the anticolonialism and even the pan-Asianism of Hatta or Nehru, they nonetheless saw themselves on the cutting Asian edge of a wider revolutionary world linking them to Beijing and Moscow— and not to Bangkok or New Delhi. While Ho Chi Minh may have sent delegates to New Delhi in 1947 to plead for pan-Asian support of the Vietnamese independence struggle, in September of that same year his diplomat-at-large, Pham Ngoc Thach, also met with a Soviet representative in Switzerland. This Vietnamese emissary reassured his Soviet counterpart that the ICP had never been dissolved; it had all been a strategy to assuage non-communist worries about the DRV’s communist core at a crucial time in the independence struggle. Thach insisted that the party was still directing the DRV from behind the scenes. He went further, explaining that the ICP was the most important and loyal communist force in Southeast Asia.18 Ideologically, communist Vietnam’s dual-track foreign policy—both anticolonialist and internationalist—made it unique in South and Southeast Asia. In June 1948, ranking communist Le Duc Tho reported to the Central Committee that the ICP should create a “Liaison Committee for the [communist] Parties in Southeast Asia” (Uy Ban Lien Lac Giua cac Dang A) in order to unite policy against the internationalist “reactionaries” and “imperialists” and develop ways of promoting mutual assistance and ideological unity among different communist parties in the region. Le Duc Tho also announced that the ICP Central Committee was about to dispatch a special envoy to Thailand to run the all-powerful “Cadres Affairs Committee” (Ban Can Su) in charge of the party’s external relations.19 In August 1948, the Fifth Plenum of the ICP’s Cadres Committee approved policies that would reorient the DRV’s foreign policy in an internationalist direction by establishing contact with the CCP and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).20 During this meeting, the Vietnamese followed the Chinese and Soviet lead by extolling the importance of “new democracy” in the building of communism in Vietnam—land reform, nationalization, and economic central planning.21 In terms of foreign policy,

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Truong Chinh welcomed the recent communist victories in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria. These new regimes confirmed for the general secretary that the democratic (communist) world was inexorably rising; the Soviet Union was increasingly stronger than the declining American-led “imperialists.” He signed on to Jdanov’s two-camp theory, announced in September 1947. In his address to the Fifth Plenum, Truong Chinh argued that the “Indochinese revolution” would be deeply influenced by the Soviet victory, those of its Eastern European allies, and by the progress of the CCP.22 The ICP expressed its desire to side firmly with the Soviet Union in the Cold War in opposition to the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan.23 While Stalin had probably not given much, if any, thought to the ICP, in 1948 Vietnamese communists had already announced that the “Indochinese nations stand in the ranks of the anti-imperialist camp . . .”24 What is the democratic revolution? The aim of the democratic revolution is to fight and overthrow the imperialist fascist clique inside and outside the country, nationalize their capital, nationalize defense and heavy industries, conduct land reform, abolish feudal vestiges, annul the big landlord system, and realize the slogan “land to the peasant” . . . [and] link up closely with the Soviet Union and all other democratic forces in order to support peace and democracy in the world.25 While Truong Chinh did not describe what the ICP’s relationship with other Southeast Asian communist parties would be, he did make it clear in mid-1948 that the Vietnamese internationalist task in Southeast Asia was to lead a “democratic revolution” in all of Indochina, and not just in the Vietnamese nationstate. As the original shows, Truong Chinh announced that Vietnamese communists had to advance toward creating an Indochinese Federation (Lien Bang Cong hoa Dan chu Dong Duong).26 Just as Stalin’s decision to entrust Mao with the revolution in Asia plotted a new trajectory in Asian international relations, so too did the Vietnamese make the Indochinese model a guiding principle of its foreign policy. As Truong Chinh put it already in 1948, the Vietnamese goal is to realize a new democratic regime in all of Indochina, to act such that Indochina becomes the People’s Democratic Republic of Indochina, the first step in moving forward to realizing socialism in Indochina. The Indochina Federation will consist of the three states of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Within each state there can later be a number of autonomous regions for minority groups which are relatively numerous and advanced.27

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Truong Chinh saw in the Indochinese model a “duty” (bon phan) and an important source of ideological legitimation for an ICP that had raised doubts in the CPSU and the CCP about its ideological purity. Vietnamese communists now saw themselves on the Indochinese cutting edge of a new Southeast Asian revolutionary world, linked to Beijing and Moscow. This, too, was the start of an unprecedented shift in Southeast Asian international history, intersecting with the decolonization of Southeast Asian colonial states and diplomatic relations.

1950: Internationalist Recognition and Vietnam’s Revolutionary View of Asia Mao Zedong’s decision to establish diplomatic relations with the DRV in January 1950 allowed Vietnamese communists to move officially into the internationalist communist world now stretching over a Eurasian axis from the Elbe in Eastern Europe to the South China Sea in East Asia. In an important document presented by Truong Chinh during the Third Plenum of the ICP held between January 21 and February 3, 1950, on foreign affairs, the general secretary made it clear that Vietnamese communists had chosen the communist side of the Cold War. It was not enough to fight a national war of liberation. Vietnam, Truong Chinh said, would now assume its internationalist duties as part of the struggle against the capitalist and imperialist bloc led by the United States: When it comes to the struggle of the democratic camp against the imperialists, Indochina is an outpost, a fortress on the anti-imperialist defense perimeter in Southeast Asia. Besides the goal of winning over our independence and democracy in this resistance [war against the French], the Indochinese people also have the aim of protecting world peace. The success or failure of the Indochinese people in the resistance [war] cannot be delinked from the democratic and peace world [movement, i.e., the communist world]. In Indochina, not only are the interests of our people and the French colonialists in conflict, but in reality the interests of the two camps, the imperialist and democratic ones, are also in conflict at the world level. The Indochina problem has become an entirely international problem. The resistance [war] against the French of the Indochinese people today is an intimate part of the struggle for world peace. Will the Indochinese people take part and respond warmly to the world peace movement? Yes. Under the leadership of the Indochinese Communist Party, the Indochinese people have and

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are shedding their blood over the last four years to win their freedom and defend world peace.28 Truong Chinh went further than in 1948 in this document by explaining that western Indochina would also lean with the Vietnamese. Whatever their weaknesses on the ground, in their heads the Vietnamese were placing all of former French colonial Indochina in this new regional and international realm. It is unlikely that Vietnamese communists ever thought to ask the Laotians and Cambodians whether they wanted to share the Southeast Asian frontline of the Cold War with them. Nevertheless, worried that the French would finally create viable monarchical nation-states in Laos and Cambodia as part of the “Associated States of Indochina,” Vietnamese communists countered by forming a revolutionary association of Indochinese states of their own. Vietnamese communists even created “resistance governments” (chinh phu khang chien) and protocommunist parties in and for Laos and Cambodia. To the Vietnamese, these resistance governments would soon come to constitute legal, legitimate, and revolutionary states, which deserved full international recognition.29 This, too, was without precedent in the history of Southeast Asian international relations. The Vietnamese were clearly players in their own history, in that of Laos and Cambodia, and in the Cold War. They were part of the making of this new revolutionary trajectory linking them to Beijing and Moscow on the one hand and, at least in their minds, making them the leaders of an Indochinese bulwark on the Southeast Asian frontlines of the Cold War. General Secretary Truong Chinh declared that Vietnamese communists were now ready to carry their revolutionary weight in Southeast Asia: “(W)e are all now standing in the forward ranks of the world peace front in Southeast Asia. That honor also assigns to us a heavy responsibility to the world. We must bravely assume it.”30 Responding to doubts within his own ranks about losing sight of Vietnam and Vietnamese national interests, Truong Chinh insisted that simply fighting the national resistance war against the French was not enough to be a part of the internationalist communist world. Quyet khong, “most definitely not,” is how he answered this rhetorical question before continuing: Besides fighting the French, we must also execute many other different tasks. We must accept that over the last few years, we have been entirely absorbed by the fight against the pirates [the foreign French]. Little attention has been paid to the world movement. From now on, we must rectify this. We must directly participate and respond to the mobilization for peace of other peoples in all the countries of the world.31

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War or not, the DRV/ICP had to assume its internationalist responsibilities. On February 4, 1950, the ICP met to celebrate Moscow and Beijing’s diplomatic recognition. A party resolution issued during this meeting proclaimed that “following the victory of the Chinese revolution, Indochina had become the outward post in the democratic front against imperialism in Southeast Asia.” The party should take advantage of the conjuncture and Sino–Soviet support in order to obtain national independence and “to work so that revolution spreads across Southeast Asia.”32 In July 1950, as the United States mobilized Allied troops to repel the North Korean invasion of South Korea and Chinese aid entered northern Vietnam, Truong Chinh announced again that the ICP’s duty was also to promote communism in Southeast Asia: Not only do we have the task of helping the Khmer and Lao revolutions, but we must also aid the revolutionary movements in Southeast Asian countries such as Malaya, Indonesia and Burma, etc. In these countries the imperialist cliques are fiercely repressing and outlawing communist parties. If we use the name Workers Party [instead of Communist Party], then we will be able to assist more easily the revolutionary movement in those countries.33 Significantly, during the crucial Second Party Congress in early 1951, Ho seems to have taken a back seat to Truong Chinh when it came to outlining and presenting this internationalist tack in Vietnamese foreign policy. Like the general secretary, Ho conceded in his address to the congress that “the international situation was now closely linked to our country. A victory by the democratic camp would be a victory for us, just as our victory would be a victory for the democratic camp.”34 He also recognized that “our Vietnam is a part of the world democratic camp. It is currently a bastion (don luy) against imperialism and against the anti democratic camp led by the Americans.”35 However, he left the questions of social revolution (land reform), the anti-American bloc, the Indochinese Federation, and Southeast Asian revolutions to Truong Chinh. Ho’s silence on these major issues may well be linked to the critiques leveled at him in the internationalist communist movement and the ICP for supporting the “nationalist” line in the late 1940s and even earlier.36 Addressing the party in early 1951, Ho Chi Minh explained that while the “dissolution” of the ICP had caused “doubts” (thac mac) within communist ranks, the party had always existed clandestinely and “still led the state and the people.”37 While Ho Chi Minh may well have regretted the Cold War’s polarization, complication, and intensification of Vietnam’s struggle for national independence, this was not the case for everyone in the ICP. Truong Chinh clearly did not see himself as a “pawn” of the Chinese and Soviets, but as a useful, faith-

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ful ally. He also did not see the arrival of the Cold War as a bad thing, but one that could promote Vietnamese interests and that of the internationalist communist movement. Vietnamese communists were actors in the extension of this internationalist shifts into Southeast Asia.38 As Tuong Vu argues in his chapter, Mark Bradley’s conclusion that the Vietnamese communists sought “to remain apart from the emerging bipolar structure of the international system” is not supported by the evidence.39 Many Vietnamese communists—and Truong Chinh was not alone—welcomed the new change in the international system, one which they had mapped out in their minds since the 1930s and were convinced would bring them victory both nationally and internationally. What Michael Hunt said for the Chinese could be applied to the Vietnamese stepping up to the revolutionary plate in 1950: Rebuilding the Vietnamese state “was inextricably tied not just to revolutionizing [Vietnam] but to transforming the international order as well’.” The two things went hand in hand. Not only would it benefit the war of national liberation, but it would also clear the way for Vietnamese communists to assume their internationalist responsibilities as the front line Indochinese soldiers in Southeast Asia. In so doing, Truong Chinh legitimated Vietnamese communism and held the internationalist communist family to support (at least in his mind) the Vietnamese in their fight against the French: “If the Indochinese people have the duty to man the peace [read: communist] fortress in this Southeast Asian region, then peaceful democratic world forces [read: the internationalist communist movement] also have the duty to positively help the Indochinese people even more.”40 Vietnamese communists could (and would) get carried away with visions of this new revolutionary Asia and especially their role in it. It is generally accepted that Stalin transferred the responsibility for the Asian mission to Mao Zedong. In contrast, there is no evidence to date, at least to my knowledge, showing that Stalin or Mao ever specifically delegated the leadership of the Southeast Asian “revolution” to Vietnamese communists. Indochina, perhaps at the outset, but that was dropped during the Geneva Conference. Like Ilya Gaiduk, I doubt very much that Soviet and Chinese leaders knew a great deal about Indochina before 1950 or about the revolutionary situation in Vietnam. In early February 1950, Truong Chinh called for developing a “political and military strategy” with the CCP on political and military questions in Southeast Asia (De ra voi Dang Trung Hoa van de mot chien luoc chinh tri va quan su chung o Dong Nam A).41 At war, the communist side probably never had the time to sit down together to sketch out such a grand strategy for Southeast Asia. The idea of leading the revolution in Southeast Asia seems to have been more the product of Vietnamese wishful thinking than some sort of internationalist communist master plan.42 Nonetheless, in this new revolutionary or-

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der they saw unfolding before their eyes in 1950, many ranking Vietnamese leaders could imagine themselves at the center of an international order promising a radical new future. Viewed from another angle, however, Sino–Soviet recognition in 1950 had far-reaching international implications for communist Vietnam. For one, internationalist communist recognition isolated the DRV from the United States, Britain and Japan; limited communist Vietnam’s room for diplomatic maneuver with non-communist Asia well into the early 1990s; contributed to turning all of former French Indochina into an international question and an increasingly violent battlefield; and helped put all of non-communist Asia in American Cold War sights. Even before Kim Il-Sung set off sirens in Washington in June 1950, Truong Chinh understood that the communist world’s diplomatic recognition of the DRV in early 1950 would provoke the United States into further supporting the French, recognizing the Associated States of Indochina, and increasing its presence in Asia and especially in Southeast Asia. This is what happened. In February 1950, the United States recognized the Associated Indochinese States of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. And “diplomatic containment” did not stop there. Facing Truong Chinh’s Indochinese revolutionary fortress and keen on consolidating his internal power, Phibun Songkhram threw in his lot with the United States when Thailand recognized all three associated states in March 1950 (see chapter eleven in this volume). In many ways, Phibun’s “North–South” alignment with the United States was as revolutionary as that of Truong Chinh’s vertical alignment with China and the Soviet Union. While moves had been underway since 1949, in 1950 the United States and the British redoubled their efforts to get the non-communist Asian states of South and Southeast Asia to recognize the Bao Dai government in a bid to contain the spread of communism on the diplomatic front. The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 only raised the stakes, as the two Koreas and the two Vietnams became the hottest “Southern” spots in the Cold War, if not the entire international system. And this brings me to the second part of this essay: If communist Vietnam willingly chose to align itself with the internationalist bloc from early 1950, how did non-communist Asian states respond to this difficult choice between one of the two Vietnams? If Vietnamese communist nationalists chose sides, did noncommunist Asian leaders such as Nehru and Sukarno have to do the same?

Neither Ho Nor Bao Dai: The Early Cold War Non-Aligning of India and Indonesia For non-communist Asian states, the Vietnamese decision to align itself with Moscow and Beijing and the outbreak of the global diplomatic war over the

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two Vietnams could not have come at a worse time. The last thing these states wanted was more foreign intervention or tension in the region. For one, painful memories of World War II and Japanese occupation were still fresh in Asian minds. Moreover, the process of Western decolonization was still in full swing. The Republic of Indonesia had just secured its national independence from the Dutch in December 1949. Third, confronted by communist parties in their own countries, Asian non-communist leaders were wary that the spread of the Cold War into the region could favor their opponents. Unlike Truong Chinh and Phibun Songkhram, non-communist Asian leaders in Burma, Indonesia and India welcomed neither Sino–Soviet nor American intervention in the region via Vietnam. They viewed the arrival of the Cold War in Vietnam and Korea with apprehension, regret, and even anger. Until 1950, what had counted most for them was decolonizing the region, building modern nation-states free of foreign interference, and reconstructing inter-Asian contacts that had long been severed by Western colonial states and domination of international affairs since at least the nineteenth century. It is well known that American-led moves to build an international coalition behind Bao Dai and a collective security system for the region troubled these Asian leaders greatly. What is less studied is that while postcolonial Asian leaders admired the DRV’s anticolonial struggle against the French, they were hardly reassured by the revolutionary Southeast Asian tack of which Truong Chinh spoke in 1950. This was certainly not one of the postcolonial regional possibilities being imagined by national leaders in Indonesia, Burma, and India. The international pressure on these countries to choose one of the two Vietnams and their refusal to do so provide us with a unique view into how these Asian countries began to imagine and adopt policies designed to keep them neutral and non-aligned in the emerging post–World War II international system. Vietnamese communists aligned themselves with the internationalist communist bloc, while leaders in India, Indonesia, and Burma began to plot a “third way” between the two blocs.

Anticolonialism and the Cold War in Non-Communist Asia As noted at the outset, both of these shifts were occurring against the historical background of Southeast Asian decolonization. As in the DRV, anticolonial nationalism held a central place in Asian foreign policymaking running from Manila to New Delhi, and, as Chen Jian shows in chapter six, on to Beijing. It was the ideological and experiential prism through which many Asian nationalists judged outside intervention in the region, interpreted “Western” pressure, and, especially in non-communist postcolonial Asia, made sense of the Cold War. Many, not all, Western diplomats underestimated the importance

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of this third shift toward anticolonialism in the formulation of Asian foreign policies. French officialdom had a particularly hard time grasping the reality of Asian nationalism and the implications of the decolonization of the international system (for the Dutch case, see Anne Foster’s contribution in this volume). Under increasing U.S. pressure and confronted by an internationally recognized DRV from 1950, the French moved grudgingly to decolonize the Indochinese Associated States, all the while “recasting” the colonial war as an integral part of the Cold War in order to prolong the French colonial foothold in Indochina.43 Like the Americans, the French turned to neighboring, noncommunist Asian states to recognize and thereby legitimate their Vietnamese state led by Bao Dai. Yet, with the exception of Thailand, Asian nationalist leaders across the region refused to recognize Bao Dai’s state of Vietnam, to France’s utter dismay. A Burmese example illustrates this nicely. In early September 1950, the French Minister to Rangoon, Raymond Plion-Bernier, was stunned to learn that the DRV’s diplomatic representative to Burma, Tran Van Luan, had been implicitly accorded, as a British diplomat reported it, “a kind of limited diplomatic status.” On September 2, during a celebration marking the fifth anniversary of the DRV’s independence, Tran Van Luan hosted the Burmese foreign minister, Sao Hkun Hkio; the minister of health, Myanaung U Tin; the minister of commerce, U Kyaw Myint; and the permanent secretary of the Burmese Foreign Office, among others. The local press related the event with considerable fanfare, including a photo of the foreign minister and Tran Van Luan standing together “with glasses in their hands, pressed against the Viet Minh flag.” Upon learning of this event, the French ambassador fired off a sharply worded protest to the Burmese foreign minister. How, the French diplomat asked, could Burma accord such recognition to France’s enemy and Bao Dai’s competitor? Annoyed by the French protest and Western meddling in his country’s internal affairs, Burma’s minister of internal affairs “entirely dropped,” according to the British minister, any pretense that his attendance at the Viet Minh party had been informal or in his personal capacity as a friend of Mr. Tran Van Luan. He referred to Burma’s recent attainment of freedom from “political bondage” and asserted that his attendance, and that of other members of the Burmese government, was a natural expression of their sympathy for all other people[s] striving for similar independence. He asserted that such attendance was not incompatible with Burma’s expressed policy of neutrality towards the affairs of

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Indochina. He pointed out that he himself shortly before had attended a party given by M. Plion-Bernier in honour of M. [Léon] Pignon, the High Commissioner for Indochina, and that no one had suggested that in his doing so [he had] compromised his government’s attitude of neutrality.44 A surprisingly consistent number of French diplomats reporting from across the region had a hard time understanding the powerful place of anticolonialism in the making of postcolonial Asian foreign policies and their refusal to support the French on Bao Dai. As the British minister to Burma summed up the Burmese refusal to choose the French side: “[T]he whole incident demonstrates the state of public feeling in Burma, even in circles normally considered antipathetic to communism and friendly to the West.” He continued: “Although I have no doubt that many in Burma have the gravest doubts of the genuineness of Ho Chi Minh[‘s] altruistic nationalism, the French and American support of Bao Dai is sufficient to condemn him as a puppet.”45 Unlike the Algerian or Indonesian wars, in Indochina the American desire to hold the line against communism led them into the anticolonialist crossfire with the French in Indochina. Whereas the Dutch had finally let go of their neo-colonial ambitions in late 1949 under international and regional pressure, the French held on colonially in Indochina thanks to increasing American backing against the “greater evil” of communism. To many Asian nationalists, this was of course interpreted differently: French colonialism was able to hold on in Indochina beyond its time because the Americans preferred to maintain Western domination over the region. Many Asians, especially the Indians, saw the American Cold War crusade as yet another example of “Western,” “white” foreign intervention in Asian affairs. Again, although Indian, Burmese, and Indonesian nationalist leaders had no patience for communist challenges to their national hold on power (see chapter thirteen in this volume), when they looked to the region and the world, they regretted that the Cold War meant that the Western powers— some of which had been their former colonial masters—remained and would even increase their presence, influence, and pressure in the international system thanks to the Cold War and at the expense of the newly independent Asian countries who had no patience for such interference. This helps explain why Pandit Nehru tended, in public, to focus on the evils of French colonialism and to deride continued Western interference in Asian affairs, rather than expound on the potential Sino–Soviet threat to non-communist Asian security via the DRV. In a private conversation with a British official in early February 1950 on American concerns about communist expan-

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sion into Southeast Asia, Nehru underscored the importance of taking seriously the anticolonial nature of the Asian “state of mind”: It is not a matter of India’s agreement or disagreement with the United States regarding their policy in South East Asia. It was really a question of approach to the problem. The approach of leaders of thought in India was determined largely by their background of recent history. They do not wish to criticize the approach of other Governments to a problem which does not immediately affect them. They are inclined to take rather a detached view and desire not to get entangled in matters which do not immediately affect them. In the case of problems of Asia, they are rather in an advantageous position on account of their psychological connections with other countries in Asia who have passed through a phase of colonial domination. The psychology of Asian nations is one of intense nationalism and inclination to resent any action which might be understood or represented as “intervention” by foreign or Western powers. For any correct approach it is, therefore, necessary to take into account this state of mind of the Asian people.46 While one can certainly question Nehru’s sweeping generalization about this mentalité asiatique, his private remarks reflect again the importance of the colonial experience in postcolonial Asian foreign policymaking and a considerable reticence, at least in 1950, to view the Cold War as an “Asian problem.” In a meeting with Dean Acheson in early 1950 on the need to recognize Bao Dai, even the pro-American Filipino leader, Brigadier General Carlos Romulo, informed the secretary of state that he had already met Ho Chi Minh and that the DRV was indeed fighting for its national independence from French colonialism.47 French and American diplomats were increasingly annoyed by the linking of the anticommunist crusade with colonialism in their meetings with Asian leaders on the need to back Bao Dai diplomatically in order to stop the spread of communism into their part of the world. One French official upset with Indonesia’s continued sympathy for Ho Chi Minh wrote it off as “irrational anticolonialism rather than political exactitude.”48 Perhaps, but of course it all depends on where one was standing in the changing international system. And geopolitical, cultural, and ideological perceptions count as much in the making of foreign policy in Asia as in the West (see chapter fifteen in this volume). Again, the 1950 choice between Bao Dai and Ho Chi Minh provides a fascinating window into Asian and Western views of the region, the world, and themselves.

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Bao Dai or Ho Chi Minh? The Non-Aligning of Nehru’s India By the spring of 1950, French, British, and American diplomats in Asia’s capitals were engaged in long and sometimes heated meetings with “Southern” leaders in a bid to get them to recognize the Associated State of Vietnam led by Bao Dai and head off the “Red tide” threatening to engulf Southeast Asia from the north. Asian recognition—more than that of the West it was argued— would legitimate the Bao Dai state effectively at the international, regional, and national levels. Unlike the Soviets, who could count on their satellites states to line up squarely behind the DRV in this Cold War diplomatic competition (and they did so), the United States had much less coercive leverage over postcolonial, non-communist Asian states. India became the scene of intense diplomatic courting for recognizing one of the two Vietnams. Backed by the French high commissioner in Saigon and the French ambassador in India, Bao Dai sent his first emissaries to New Delhi to try to convince the Indian government that the state of Vietnam was truly independent and worthy of full diplomatic recognition. Do Hung, a French national and one of France’s top intelligence agents in Asia during the interwar period, worked in New Delhi between December 1949 and February 1950 to crack the difficult Indian case. An internal French report conceded the difficulties of his mission, but concluded optimistically that Do Hung had at least made a good start. When he returned to Saigon to assume “high-level assignments” in the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he was replaced in September by Nguyen Duy Thanh, a defector from the Viet Minh. Other missions left for Pakistan and Indonesia.49 Despite French wishful thinking, these efforts yielded no tangible results. Nehru refused to meet Bao Dai’s representatives, insisting that they were only in India in an unofficial capacity. One British diplomat following the affair closely commented dryly that Bao Dai’s diplomatic “mission has cut no ice in New Delhi, and will no doubt cut even less in Jakarta.”50 Ho Chi Minh also dispatched envoys to non-communist Asia in a bid to get the DRV recognized or at least win over Asian public opinion to the Vietnamese anticolonialist struggle. Despite internal criticism within the ICP and in the international communist movement of his non-communist diplomacy, in January 1950 Ho sent official letters to South and Southeast Asian governments inviting them to establish formal diplomatic relations with the DRV. He even sent one to Phibun Songkhram’s government in an apparent attempt to soften Thai hostility and to keep the DRV from leaning too hard to one side of the Cold War.51 Ho probably hoped that anticolonialism just might tip part of non-communist Asia his way. After all, diplomatic recognition, especially that

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of the Indian or Indonesian governments, would have helped Ho keep the DRV on a more even keel as it entered the very rough diplomatic waters now being churned up by the Cold War. On orders from Ho, Pham Ngoc Thach had already visited New Delhi in 1948 in a bid to get Nehru to support the DRV’s case at the UN.52 Fluent in English and one of the DRV’s future top diplomats, Ngo Dien left for New Delhi to solicit diplomatic recognition from the Indian government.53 However, the DRV’s diplomats did little better than their competitors. Despite his hostility to colonialism, Nehru refused to recognize either of the two Vietnams. In a press conference on January 6, 1950, before Sino–Soviet recognition of the DRV, he explained that his government would not align itself with any side in the building Cold War: “India’s policy is to give no official recognition in Indo-China to any government, as authority there is divided. For the present we are just to watch developments there and let the people of IndoChina decide.”54 He reiterated this line systematically for the next year, becoming easily angered when pressed as to why he did not support the DRV on anticolonialist grounds.55 What were Nehru’s intimate views on the question? It is hard to say for sure without access to the archives.56 Since 1945, he had refused to support the DRV other than to provide “moral’” sympathy. When the British High Commissioner to India met privately with the Indian minister of foreign affairs and queried him on Sino–Soviet recognition of Ho’s government, the Indian minister responded that little could be done. Nehru, he explained, “had little doubts that Ho Chi Minh was an out and out communist. But Bao Dai was, in their view, little more than a French puppet and lacking in personal qualities.”57 In a private meeting with British journalists in 1949, Nehru had already written Bao Dai off as a “nice little boy,” but unable to rule a nation. In a private letter to his Chief Minister, Nehru explained that though the United States and Britain had recognized the Bao Dai government, the Indians would do nothing of the sort. Bao Dai could not “really be considered independent of the French.”58 Besides anticolonialism, Nehru’s refusal to recognize either of the two Vietnams was also a reflection of his foreign policy ideas set out in “The Basic Approach,” a blueprint for Indian postcolonial foreign policy that gave priority to promoting peace and stability in the region. Like Gandhi before him, Nehru abhorred violence, not least of all that which had torn postcolonial India into two parts. Nehru felt that communists and anticommunists were equally dangerous in that both believed that the rightness of their cause was divinely inspired and that the other was wrong; and worse, both were prepared to resort to force if need be to show that they were right. Second, Nehru had developed his ideas on “non-alignment” since 1946, insisting that India should avoid en-

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tering into military alliances with any foreign state, whether “free” or “communist.” In short, Nehru sought to distance India from power alignments in order to steer the country along a middle course, one which would promote decolonization, peace, and stability in Asia. As A. Appadorai has put it, “To Nehru joining one bloc or the other was not in India’s interest. He consistently followed the policy of non-alignment.”59 The Bao Dai–Ho Chi Minh dilemma was one of the first manifestations of Indian foreign policy trying to take the middle course. Nehru reiterated India’s position on the two Vietnams as follows: “We believe that the more interference there is, the more difficult is the solution. This is not a negative attitude, but a slightly positive one, because we do not want to make more difficult Indo-China’s fight for independence.”60 Despite repeated overtures, the French could not change Nehru’s mind. In 1951, Nehru issued strict instructions to inform the French that the pre-existing Indian consulate in Saigon, which had been accredited to the French colonial state under the British, could not be considered as the Indian consulate to the Associated State of Vietnam. In stronger terms than before, Nehru made it clear that India had to steer a middle course between Bao Dai and Ho Chi Minh as part of an emerging policy of navigating between the two Cold War blocs: I am quite clear that we should not take any step which might imply even indirectly any recognition of Vietnam. If this involves our having to close our consulate, we should not hesitate to close it. This position should be made perfectly clear to the French Embassy [in India] here. . . . It is clear that we will not agree to having a Vietnam consul in India. . . . I think the best course would be to point out to the French Embassy what our position is in the clearest language. The question of our language possibly not being liked by Vietnam should not arise. We cannot help it if they do not like it. But we must be very careful not to use equivocal language which might be misunderstood or stretched to mean something different than what we intended to mean.61 In 1951, in a private conservation, De Mello Kamath (DMK), the head of India’s consulate in Saigon and a relative of Nehru, explained to a pro–Bao Dai Vietnamese interlocutor why the Indian government balked at recognizing Bao Dai. This private conversation, obtained by the French secret services, provides insights into internal Indian thinking on the need to steer a middle course between the two Vietnams: DMK [De Mello Kamath]: As Indians we only know the mass, not the individual. That is a principle that explains why we will not rec-

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ognize a country until we are convinced that its people are truly strong and united. [Un-named Vietnamese counterpart62]: The fact that you do not recognize the Bao Dai government, already recognized by more than 40 nations [all non-Asian countries, except Thailand], undoubtedly means that you prefer the Ho Chi Minh government, which you believe to be the stronger [of the two]? DMK: That is another matter, but it is possible that it could become the case [Ceci est une autre affaire, mais il est possible qu’elle devienne évidente]. [Vietnamese counterpart]: Without wanting to be indiscreet, would you be disposed to favor, if necessary, the Ho Chi Minh government? DMK: From what point of view? [Vietnamese counterpart]: Either to provide him with moral support, [or] . . . to favor, if necessary, his cause. DMK (hesitating, reflecting): Personally, I do not know Mr. Ho Chi Minh, but my big boss [Nehru] knows him well as a great revolutionary and as an incomparable patriot. If ever the occasion presented itself to me to be kind to him [Ho Chi Minh], it is certain that I would not miss the chance. . . . In any case, it is important to recall that we have a common destiny with that of all of South-East Asia. (DMK then asked that this confidence be kept between him and his interlocutor.) [Vietnamese counterpart]: Have you had the chance to do any favors for Mr. Ho Chi Minh? DMK: (Answers with a smile and adds): For his cause, yes. DMK: Do you think that the Bao Dai government has now become truly independent, the French having returned to him all powers? [Vietnamese counterpart]: I believe so. DMK: I hope that it is as such, for I will not hide from you that our views do not correspond to yours. . . . [Vietnamese counterpart]: Does the Chinese communist advance toward Tibet give India any cause for worry?

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DMK: Yes, very much so[,] and that is our sole worry at this time. It’s for this reason that our great boss [Nehru] is currently deploying all of his energy with a view not only of stopping this advance on our Sino–Indian borders, but also to intervene in the Korean conflict as a mediator.63 The last point is important. For whatever the anticolonial hostility to the French and Bao Dai’s Vietnam, no Asian state ever recognized the DRV before the Geneva Accords were signed in 1954. India, like the French and the Americans, was also analyzing the two Vietnams in light of wider international and regional changes, especially in China. Nehru avoided the Vietnam problem assiduously and even underlined his strict neutrality by allowing the French and Bao Dai to send their representatives to Delhi like the DRV (as well as to the Asian Relations Conference in 1947 and at the ECAFE in 1949). Nehru may have admired Ho Chi Minh, but he never collaborated as closely with Ho as he did with Indonesian or Burmese leaders. Appadorai is right in saying that India’s support of the Vietnamese independence struggle “lacked the same enthusiasm.”64 Why then did non-communist Asia refuse to recognize Ho Chi Minh, in spite of the heroic anticolonialist image that he and the Vietnamese nationalist struggle had long occupied in Indian public opinion? There were several reasons for backing away from Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnam. Not wanting to get sucked into the Cold War was of course part of it. Second, diplomatic recognition of the DRV would have endangered difficult negotiations with the French on Pondicherry, a longstanding colonial enclave. The Chinese communist victory in 1949 also influenced Nehru’s strategic calculations. Although he was anything but an Asian Cold warrior, he had reason to be worried by the Chinese communist victory of 1949, its ambitions in central Asia, and a possible Sino–Vietnamese revolutionary link-up in Southeast Asia as Truong Chinh hoped would be the case (see above). By late 1950, the Chinese Red Army had occupied all of Tibet, smashing all opposition to Chinese rule, and had adopted a hostile attitude to India as a non-communist country. Lastly, whatever his sympathy for Vietnamese anticolonialism, Nehru was privately wary of the DRV’s communist core. The Indonesian Republic was not communist and India had no qualms when Sukarno and Hatta crushed the communist-led Madiun revolt between September and December 1948.65 The DRV’s revolutionary alignment with communist China and the Soviet Union privately worried ranking Indian leaders. In late April 1951, for example, India’s ambassador to China, K.M. Panikkar, met with Hoang Van Hoan in Beijing—the ICP’s diplomatic point man since 1948, the DRV’s first ambassador to China from 1950, a long-time confidant of Ho Chi Minh since the

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1920s, and a high-ranking member of the Communist Party since its creation. Like his American competitors, Hoang Van Hoan wanted to know why noncommunist Asian nations such as India could not decide between Bao Dai and Ho Chi Minh. The choice seemed obvious to him. Panikkar responded that India’s view “has been one of strict neutrality.” He said that his government’s policy was that it would only recognize a government when it controlled the majority of the territory. So far as Ho Chi Minh was concerned, though his Government controlled large areas[,] he was still fighting for victory and had not established his authority over the entire State. So while the sympathy of the people of India was, generally speaking, on the side of the national freedom movement, we had been careful to maintain an attitude of strict neutrality.66 But there was more to it than this. After all, Indonesian Republicans had been in no better a position against the Dutch. In short, Panikkar knew that the DRV was run by a communist core. Significantly, he pressed Hoan on Vietnam’s role in the revolutionary affairs in Laos and Cambodia. Hoang Van Hoan assured the Indian ambassador that the “Viet Minh’s relations with the resistance movements in those countries were on an international basis, and that the movement which Ho Chi Minh headed was confined to Vietnam proper, i.e.[,] Annam, Tonkin and the territories belonging to the old Empire.”67 Obviously, Hoan was not going to tell him the truth, for Hoang Van Hoan was himself one of the main architects of the ICP’s communist policy toward Laos and Cambodia, having written in 1948 much of the ICP’s guidelines to be used toward the two countries as the head of the party External Cadres Committee in Thailand (Ban Can Su). No mention was made of Truong Chinh’s revolutionary view of putting all of Indochina on the cutting edge of the communist world in Southeast Asia. While Panikkar probably had no clue as to the real importance of the man sitting before him, the Indians knew that the Vietnamese were not in the same category as the Indonesians, and New Delhi privately suspected the Vietnamese of having wider geographical ambitions in Southeast Asia than just Vietnam. This clearly influenced their decision not to recognize the DRV. Indian parliamentary debates in 1950 leave no doubt that the Bao Dai–Ho Chi Minh Cold War conundrum was on Indian minds, as was the potential communist threat to the region. Ranking politicians such as C. Raja Gopalachari, V. Patel, and Pandit Pant were hostile to the spread of communism in the region. In a revealing geopolitical association, Shri F. Anthony, a member of Parliament, said that the borders of India lay in Tibet and Indochina.68 On Febru-

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ary 4, 1950, one Indian newspaper closely following the issue said perhaps in public what Nehru felt in private: “Recognition of Dr. Ho’s regime by two major countries of the world does establish his close alignment with them and creates new changes in the South East Asian set up.”69 The Hindustan Times said that India could not choose one in favor of the other since both had “the backing of foreign bayonets,” adding that the communist core of the DRV demanded “a cautious attitude.”70 A number of ranking Indian leaders clearly understood that the Sino–Soviet recognition of Vietnam in 1950 had changed the geo-political map by ushering the Cold War into the region. Had the DRV been a purely nationalist led movement like the Indonesian Republic, it is possible that Nehru would have intervened on anticolonialist and pan-Asian grounds in favor of Vietnamese national independence. But, as Ton That Thien put it above, in the eyes of many ranking Indian leaders, “Cinderella had a red complexion.”71 To India and Indonesia (see above), the DRV was simply not neutral in the Cold War in 1950. The Indian refusal to recognize one of the two Vietnams reveals the emergence of a shift in non-communist Asian foreign policies toward a nonaligned tack or a “third way.”

Indonesia between the Two Vietnams Indonesia was also a key target for both the East and the West in the diplomatic battle for Vietnam. As Richard Mason shows in chapter two of this volume, anticolonialist and non-communist Indonesia could play a major role in Washington’s efforts to contain communist expansion into Southeast Asia and legitimate the Bao Dai solution at the crucial Asian level. Under increasing pressure from the West, in March 1950 Prime Minister Muhammad Hatta informed the British that his government was “closely studying” the Vietnamese question.72 But as elsewhere in the region, many Indonesian politicians and the public opinion at large sympathized with Ho Chi Minh’s fight against French colonialism. In fact, Indonesia came surprisingly close to recognizing the DRV in 1950. In early June a motion for the recognition of Ho Chi Minh’s regime came before the Indonesian parliament. This motion had been submitted by Njoto dan Sakirman of the Partai Sosialis. It had already been debated in the House, and a vote on it was now imminent. The Sakirman motion was very anticolonialist, something that made it hard for any nationalist leader, including Hatta, to oppose. But Hatta did not want to take sides over Vietnam, agreeing with Nehru that behind the choice “lays the seeds of major conflict.”73 To avoid recognizing the DRV, the government enlisted Mohammad Natsir, a member of the Moslem Masjumi party, to submit a watered-down counter motion, stop-

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ping short of diplomatic recognition but still sufficiently anticolonialist in content. Natsir’s motion urged the government to study the DRV question in greater detail before extending recognition. “We have to bring the Viet Minh question,” Natsir said, “to an international level. Steps taken by Indonesia outside the Security Council are more likely to create confusion than support the Viet Minh government. [The] Viet Minh’s struggle for freedom runs parallel with Indonesia’s struggle, but if we support the Viet Minh’s struggle we must give such assistance as will benefit Viet Minh without weakening Indonesia’s positions.” When the debate resumed, the Left continued to push for diplomatic recognition of the DRV as part of the fight against imperialism. The Socialists insisted that Indonesia should not allow her foreign policy to be dictated by foreign loan conditions and pressures (see Richard Mason’s chapter on this question). The debate was apparently heated (although the internal Indonesian archival account is still not available). Hatta conceded that everyone agreed with the desire to aid the Vietnamese people in their independence struggle against French colonialism. He could not go against public opinion and his own views of Bao Dai as an illegitimate nationalist leader. But what practical measures would serve that goal best, he asked rhetorically? He conceded, like Nehru, that Bao Dai did not represent authentic Vietnamese nationalist aspirations. However, if the Indonesians truly felt that the DRV was the right choice, then the question deserved further study and reflection before voting on such an important question as diplomatic recognition. In the end, both motions were presented together, with each member being left the right to vote for the motion of his choice. To the relief of the Hatta government, to say nothing of the Americans, British, and French, the Natsir motion won over the Sakirman one by a vote of 49 to 38.74 The question of Indonesian diplomatic recognition of the DRV was thus shelved for the time being, and a potential crisis in Indonesian–American relations had been avoided. But like India and Burma, the Indonesians refused to lean the American way on the two Vietnams. As a British diplomat summed up his discussion with Hatta on the prickly Bao Dai–Ho Chi Minh conundrum: [I]n private Dr. Hatta had admitted to me more than once that South East Asia faces a new imperialism which is at least as oppressive as the old. He is fully aware of the process that leads step-by-step to Soviet domination of neighbouring communist states and he realizes that an expansionist China might in course of time follow the Soviet example. These private realisations of the danger of militant communism do not mean that Dr. Hatta or any other Indonesians

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can be persuaded to support Bao Dai. Nothing that we can say will ever induce the countries of South East Asia to look with favour on a regime associated with French colonial authority. Such favour would run against the whole current of thought in this area of convulsively emerging nations. What Dr. Hatta and his supporters would like to see if not the triumph of either Ho Chi Minh or Bao Dai, but an internationally negotiated compromise that would unite the two contending factions in one free nation under a government of the people’s choice.75

Conclusion In this chapter, I have attempted to show how the Sino–Soviet recognition of the DRV in 1950 and the ensuing Cold War battle over the “two Vietnams” reflected new historical shifts in the Asian international system, which have received little scholarly attention. On the “revolutionary” side, I have suggested how the ICP/DRV was not necessarily forced, reluctantly, into the communist camp by American blindness to Vietnamese nationalism.76 Vietnamese communists welcomed Sino–Soviet diplomatic recognition in early 1950 and many saw in the Cold War the possibility to promote more effectively their own nationalist interests as well as those of the internationalist communist movement. Top-ranking Vietnamese leaders, such as the party’s general secretary, Truong Chinh, not only sought to align Vietnam with the communist world, but to bring Laos and Cambodia along with them in order to form the Indochinese cutting edge of the internationalist world in Southeast Asia. Vietnamese leaders were actors in their own history. They had their own agency, trying to use the international system to their advantage. Viewed from the non-communist angle, I have tried to show how India, Burma, and Indonesia refused to choose between the two Vietnams, caught between an anticolonialist desire to see the full decolonization of Asia and the realization that taking sides in the Cold War could destabilize the region and their own countries. Nowhere was the intersection of decolonization and the Cold War better seen than in the near unanimous non-communist Asian decision to adopt foreign policies of neutrality toward the “two Vietnams.”77 Thus, if the communist leaders of the DRV chose to lean firmly to the Sino–Soviet side in 1950, the Indians, Indonesians, and Burmese began to steer a middle course in the Cold War. While it was not the only reason, the difficult choice between the “two Vietnams” from 1950 provides us with a rare and revealing window into the origins of non-alignment in the South. And it is perhaps not an accident that it began in Asia at the conjuncture of 1950. After all, the joint

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Indian and Indonesian decision to organize the non-aligned conference in Bandung in 1955, one year after the fall of Dien Bien Phu and the Geneva Conference, did not emerge in an historical vacuum. Its roots are in the difficult choices confronting non-communist Asian leaders, such as India and Indonesia, over the two Vietnams and Koreas. Indeed, viewed from a wider historical angle, the DRV’s internationalist alignment with the Chinese and the Soviets in 1950 ensured that Vietnam’s revolutionary foreign policy, despite its courageous and heroic nationalist struggle, would follow a different track, one which would distance it from the rest of non-communist South and Southeast Asia, not to mention the United States, Japan, and Western Europe. The DRV was simply not non-aligned like India, Indonesia, Egypt, or Algeria.78 It would take the end of the Cold War, the Vietnamese withdrawal from Western Indochina in 1989, and the neutralization of Cambodia in 1991 to bring Vietnam into the wider Asian family that it had briefly discovered between 1945 and 1949 but had never really known as well as Eastern Europe, China, North Korea, and Cuba. And in this sense, Hanoi’s decision to join the non-communist Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1995 was perhaps less of a diplomatic victory than the confirmation of the failure of Truong Chinh’s internationalist vision of Southeast Asia in 1950.79 But this is another story.

Notes 1. “Jawaharlal Nehru to Chief Minister,” New Delhi, February 6, 1950, in Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, second series, vol. 14, part I (November 15, 1949–April 8, 1950) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 404. 2. For excellent accounts, see Gary R. Hess, “The First American Commitment to Indochina: The Acceptance of the ‘Bao Dai Solution,’ 1950,” Diplomatic History 2 (1978), 331–50; George C. Herring, “The Truman Administration and the Restoration of French Sovereignty in Indochina,” Diplomatic History, 1 (Spring 1977), 97–117; and Mark Lawrence, Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 179–232. On the near diplomatic meltdown of communist Vietnam’s attempts to join the international communist bloc leading up to January 1950, see my “Courting Diplomatic Disaster? The Difficult Integration of Vietnam into the Internationalist Communist Movement (1945–1950),” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 1, nos. 1–2 (Fall 2006), 59–103. 3. On Algeria and the international context, see Guy Pervillé, “La révolution algérienne et la ‘guerre froide,’” Revues Etudes internationales 16, no. 1 (March 1985), 55–66; Thomas Oppermann, Le problème algérien (Paris: François Maspéro, 1961); and Matthew Connely, A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria’s Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). 4. “Chinh-Sach Ngoai-Giao cua Chinh-Phu Lam-Thoi Nuoc Dan-Chu Cong-Hoa Viet-Nam,” Cuu Quoc, no. 57 (October 3, 1945), 1, article III, section e.

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5. “Thoi Luan: Hoi Lien-Hiep A-Chau hay la: Mat Tran Dan Toc Nhuoc Tieu AChau,” Doc Lap, no. 111 (March 30, 1946), 1. 6. I rely on my Thailand and the Southeast Asian Networks of the Vietnamese Revolution (1885–1954) (Surrey and London: Routledge/Curzon, 1999), chapter 6. 7. On Stalin’s reluctance to recognize the DRV and American interest in the DRV, see my “Courting Diplomatic Disaster?” 8. Cited in Hanna Papanek, “Note on Soedjatmoko’s Recollections of a Historical Moment: Sjahrir’s Reaction to Ho Chi Minh’s Call for a Free Peoples Federation,” Indonesia, no. 49 (April 1990), 144. 9. Thailand and the Southeast Asian Networks of the Vietnamese Revolution, chapter 6. 10. The Mail (Madras), May 23, 1948, cited by Ton That Thien, India and South East Asia, 1947–1960: A Study of India’s Policy towards the South East Asian Countries in the Period 1947–1960 (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1963), 149. 11. Had the French created a truly independent non-communist Vietnamese nationstate earlier, say by late 1948, one wonders whether the DRV would have won over Chinese and Soviet diplomatic recognition in 1950. Given the reluctance of the Soviets and doubt within the Chinese and French communist parties in the late 1940s, this is not such a far-fetched idea as we might think. It was certainly on the minds of Vietnamese communists in the late 1940s. See my “Courting Diplomatic Disaster?” 12. Would Soviet and Chinese ambassadors be stationed to Vietnam? Would the French fire upon Chinese ships or trucks entering the DRV-controlled territory? HCFIC, no. 16/ps/cab, Saigon, “Le Haut-Commissariat de France en Indochine à M. le Ministre de la France d’Outre-mer, Objet: Reconnaissance de Ho Chi Minh par Mao Tse Tung,” signed by Léon Pignon, Saigon, 24 January 1950, file 6, box 11, grouping Slotfom, XIV, Centre des Archives d’Outre-mer, Aix-en-Provence, France. 13. See my “Vietnam, the Third Indochina War and the Meltdown of Asian Internationalism,” in Arne Odd Westad and Sophie Quinn-Judge, eds., The Third Indochina War: Conflict between China, Vietnam and Cambodia, 1972–79 (London: Routledge, 2006), 152–86. 14. Michael H. Hunt, The Genesis of Chinese Communist Foreign Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 219–20. 15. See my “Le Vietnam et le monde extérieur: le cas des conseillers vietnamiens au Laos,” Communisme, nos. 80–82 (2004–2005), 161–92. 16. Hunt, The Genesis of Chinese Communist Foreign Policy, 220. 17. Chen Jian has some very insightful things to say on Mao’s ideas. Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001). 18. See my “Courting Diplomatic Disaster?” 19. Bo ngoai giao, Dau tranh ngoai giao, vol. 2, 32–33, citing “Bao cao Hoi Nghi Trung Uong Thang 6.1948,” by Le Duc Tho (p. 33, n. 1). The head of this committee was Hoang Van Hoan, a ranking communist and the man who would be the DRV’s first ambassador to the PRC. Hoang Van Hoan ran all of Vietnam’s foreign relations, communist and non-communist, from this committee based in Thailand. 20. “Cach-Mang Dan-Chu Moi o Dong Duong: trich ban bao cao “chung ta chien dau cho doc lap va dan chu” cua TRUONG CHINH tai Hoi Nghi can bo lan thu 5 (8–16 thang 8 1948),” in Van Kien Dang, Toan Tap, vol. 9 (1948) (Hanoi: NXBCTQG, 2001),

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166–238. I also rely on the original version of the first document that I located in the National Library in Hanoi: Cach-Mang Dan-Chu Moi o Dong Duong: trich ban bao cao “chung ta chien dau cho doc lap va dan chu cua TRUONG CHINH tai Hoi Nghi can bo lan thu 5 (8–16 thang 8 1948), 17. 21. Bo ngoai giao, Dau tranh ngoai giao, vol. 2, 32. 22. “Cach-Mang Dan-Chu Moi o Dong Duong: trich ban bao cao ‘chung ta chien dau cho doc lap va dan chu cua TRUONG CHINH tai Hoi Nghi can bo lan thu 5 (8–16 thang 8 1948),” (original, archived in National Library, Hanoi), 17. 23. “Chung ta chien dau cho doc lap va dan chu: bao cao doc o Hoi nghi can bo lan thu V (Tu 8.8 den 16.8.1948),” in Van kien Dang toan tap, vol. 9, 1948, 174–78. 24. “Chung ta chien dau cho doc lap va dan chu: bao cao doc o Hoi nghi can bo lan thu V (Tu 8.8 den 16.8.1948),” in Van kien Dang toan tap, vol. 9, 1948, 177. 25. “Cach-Mang Dan-Chu Moi o Dong Duong: trich ban bao cao ‘chung ta chien dau cho doc lap va dan chu cua TRUONG CHINH tai Hoi Nghi can bo lan thu 5 (8–16 thang 8 1948),” (original), 5. 26. “Cach-Mang Dan-Chu Moi o Dong Duong: trich ban bao cao ‘chung ta chien dau cho doc lap va dan chu cua TRUONG CHINH tai Hoi Nghi can bo lan thu 5 (8–16 thang 8 1948),” (original), 25–27. Mention of the Indochinese Federation was officially removed from the recently printed version of this party document in 2001 in Van Kien Dang, 209. The party editors simply noted their censorship with an ellipsis (. . .). 27. “Cach-Mang Dan-Chu Moi o Dong Duong: trich ban bao cao ‘chung ta chien dau cho doc lap va dan chu cua TRUONG CHINH tai Hoi Nghi can bo lan thu 5 (8–16 thang 8 1948), (original), 26. 28. Truong-Chinh, Hoan thanh nhiem vu chuan bi chuyen manh sang tong phan cong: Bao cao doc o Hoi nghi toan quo clan thu III (21-1-3-2-1950) (Sinh hoat noi bo, 1950), 77–78. 29. See my Le contexte asiatique de la guerre franco-vietnamienne: réseaux, relations et économie (Paris: EPHE/Sorbonne, 2001), Indochina section. 30. Truong-Chinh, Hoan thanh nhiem vu chuan bi chuyen manh sang tong phan cong, 79. 31. Ibid., 79–80. 32. “Nghi quyet cua Thuong vu Trung Uong ve nhat xet tinh hinh cac viec phai lam do Lien Xo, Trung Quoc va cac nuoc dan chu nhan dan thua nhan Viet Nam de ra ngay 4.2.1950,” in Van Kien Dang Toan Tap, vol. 11, 1950 (Hanoi: NXBCTQG, 2001), 222. 33. “Thong cao cua ban chap hanh trung uong dang cong san dong duong ve viec de nghi doi ten Dang thang 7 1950,” in Van kien dang toan tap, vol. 11, 372. 34. Ho Chi Minh, “Bao cao chinh tri doc tai Dai hoi dai bieu toan quo clan thu nhat thang 2 1951,” 38. 35. Ibid. 36. On this question, see Ilya Gaiduk’s essay in this volume and my “Courting Diplomatic Disaster?” 37. Ho Chi Minh, “Bao cao chinh tri doc tai Dai hoi dai bieu toan quoc lan thu nhat thang 2 1951,” Ban Chap Hanh Trung Uong Xuat Ban, 1951, 21. In light of the internationalist critiques of Ho’s “dissolution” of the ICP in 1945, one wonders to what extent Ho was defending himself and his more nationally focused policies against his internationally minded critics, who clearly were on the rise at this international juncture. 38. On the importance of taking “peripheral,” “small” actors seriously in the mak-

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ing of the international system and history, see Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa (1959–1976) (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002). 39. Mark Philip Bradley, Imagining Vietnam and America: The Making of Postcolonial Vietnam, 1919–1950 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 181. Bradley’s view is shared by many other scholars who tend to see the Vietnamese as victims of the Cold War rather than as players in it. 40. Truong-Chinh, Hoan thanh nhiem vu chuan bi chuyen manh sang tong phan cong, 81. There were also important people in the internationalist communist movement who had wondered about the revolutionary mettle of Vietnamese communists between 1945 and early 1950. See my “Courting Diplomatic Disaster?” 41. “Nghi quyet cua Thuong vu Trung Uong ve nhat xet tinh hinh,” in Van Kien Dang Toan Tap, vol. 11, 223. 42. Dau Tranh, 33, citing “Bao cao truoc Hoi Nghi Trung Uong toan quoc lan thu hai 1950.” 43. This was not unlike Truong Chinh’s efforts to internationalize the DRV’s war of national liberation. See above. 44. British Embassy, Rangoon, no. 355, September 25, 1950, “Mr. Freese Pennefather to Mr. Bevin,” in FO371/83623, Public Records Office (hereafter PRO). 45. Foreign Office, no. 333, Rangoon, September 7, 1950, “Mr. Fresse Pennefather to Mr. Bevin,” in FO 371/83623, PRO. The Burmese Foreign Minister conceded in private to the British ambassador that he was “much distressed at the publicity of the photograph with its clear but quite false suggestion that he had proposed the toast to Viet Minh as is usual at such functions.” The Burmese minister explained that he had accepted to attend on the condition that there be no toasts or speeches and that if it was proposed to play a national anthem he should be given warning so as to be able to leave before this happened.” 46. “Note by A.V. Pai, Principal Private Secretary, of Jawaharlal Nehru’s remarks in his talks with Loy Henderson on 8 February 1950,” J.N. Collection, extracts in “U.S. Concern at Communist Expansion in South East Asia,” in Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, second series, vol. 14, part I (November 15, 1949–April 8, 1950) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 562–63. 47. “Top Secret Memorandum of Conversation by the Secretary of State,” March 10, 1950, in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950, vol. 6 (East Asia and the Pacific) (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1976), 751. 48. “Bilan de la situation diplomatique à la fin de l’année 1950,” 30–31, file 2, box 10H172, SHAT, 32. 49. “Bilan de la situation diplomatique à la fin de l’année 1950,” 30–31. 50. British Consulate General, September 28, 1950, FO/959/104, PRO. 51. Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Prime Minister’s Office, dated 26 January 1950, in s.r. 0201.37.6/Folder 11.1, Thai National Archives. See also: “Bac Ho tra loi bao Praxathipatay (Dan Chu) cua Thaï Lan,” Nghien Cuu Dong Nam A, no. 2 (7) (1992), 77–78. 52. On February 3, 1948, Pham Ngoc Thach informed the Americans in Bangkok that he was leaving with a petition signed by Ho Chi Minh requesting UN intervention. He planned to give it to Nehru. “Outgoing Telegram to Consul Saigon,” Febru-

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ary 3, 1948, 851G.00/2-348, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD. 53. Commonwealth Relations Office, Downing Street, “Enclosed minutes by Robert in New Delhi about the situation in Indochina,” February 7, 1950, FO371/83625, PRO. 54. Press conference at New Delhi, January 6, 1950, File no. 43 (102)/50-PMS, Indian Foreign Office, in “On a No-War Declaration,” in Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, second series, vol. 14, part I (November 15, 1949–April 8, 1950) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 12. 55. “From UK High Commissioner India,” no. 444, February 7, 1950, in FO/371/ 83625, PRO. 56. While I was allowed to work in the archives of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, I failed to locate documents related to this question. 57. Inward telegram from UK High Commissioner in India, February 5, 1950, in FO/371/83625, PRO. 58. “Nehru to his Chief Minister,” New Delhi, February 2, 1950, file no. 25(6)-50PMS, in Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, second series, vol. 14, part I (November 15, 1949–April 8, 1950) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 396. Although counterfactual, one wonders, again, would India have recognized a truly independent non-communist Vietnam had the French moved that way earlier, before it was too late? 59. A. Appadorai, Essays in Indian Politics and Foreign Policy (Delhi: Vikas Publications, 1971), 156–65. 60. Remarks at press conference, Jakarta, 16 June 1950, from The Hindu, 17 June 1950, extracts in Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, second series, vol. 14, part II (April 8–July 31, 1950) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 392. 61. Recognition of the Bao Dai government, Note, New Delhi, 24 October 1951, J. Nehru Collection, in Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, 1951, second series (July 1–October 31, 1951) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 651. The Indian government operated a consulate to deal with the Indian community in French Indochina. 62. I’m tempted to think that it is Do Hung, although I have no proof. 63. Conversation d’un diplomate indien’ (janvier 1951), excerpts in République française, Présidence du Conseil, dated November 7, 1953, based on Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage (SDECE), no. 21.1/E.O. 585/ A.02.609, “La Chine communiste et le Viet Minh,” box 10H660, Service historique de 1’armee de terre (SHAT). During his assignment to Saigon, Mello never hid his disdain for French colonialism, and French authorities were treated with the same disregard. A well-informed British diplomat, however, reported that Mello’s views represented those of Nehru himself. British Consulate General, Saigon, April 15, 1950, FO371/83625, PRO. 64. A. Appadorai, Essays in Indian Politics and Foreign Policy, 351. 65. Ibid., 348–55. 66. K.M. Panikkar, In Two Chinas: Memoirs of a Diplomat (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1955), 140–41. 67. Ibid., 141–42. 68. See Ton That Thien, India and South East Asia, 1947–1960, 129. 69. Cited by ibid. 70. Cited by ibid. 71. Ibid., 149.

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72. “Mohammad Hatta to D.W. Kermode,” L662/2C/1, March 25, 1950, FO/371/ 83622, PRO. 73. “Jawaharlal Nehru to Chief Minister,” New Delhi, February 6, 1950, in Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, second series, vol. 14, part I (November 15, 1949–April 8, 1950) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 404. 74. Dispatch of Mr. Kermede, British Embassy, Jakarta, no. 120, June 13, 1950, 5, FO371/69694, PRO. 75. Ibid. 76. See also Tuong Vu’s chapter in this volume. 77. In this sense, Phibun’s exceptional decision to lean the West’s way in the Cold War by recognizing Bao Dai’s State of Vietnam parallels Truong Chinh’s revolutionary alignment of Vietnamese foreign policy with the Soviet Union and China. On Phibun, see Daniel Fineman’s chapter in this volume. 78. In 1956, at the all-important Soummam Congress, the Algerian FLN declared: “La Révolution algérienne, malgré les calumnies de la propaganda colonialiste, est un combat patriotique, dont la base est incontestablement de caractère national, politique et social. Elle n’est inféodée ni au Caire, ni à Londres, ni à Moscou, ni à Washingotn. Elle s’inscrit dans le cours normal de l’évolution historique de l’humanité, qui n’admet plus l’existence de nations captives.” Cited by Pervillé, “La révolution algérienne et la ‘guerre froide,’” 61. If the DRV shared the FLN’s nationalism, Vietnamese communists in 1950 had leaned to one side—Moscow’s. It mattered. 79. In this wider context, it may not be an accident that the Indians and the Indonesians in particular played a pivotal role in behind-the-scenes diplomacy designed to end the Third Indochina War and Vietnam’s occupation of Laos and Cambodia.

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9. Indonesia’s Diplomatic Revolution: Lining Up for Non-Alignment, 1945–1955 Samuel E. Crowl

I

n December 1949, Indonesia secured de jure international recognition of the independence nationalist leaders had proclaimed in August 1945. This recognition was gained despite concentrated military, economic, and diplomatic efforts by the Netherlands to regain control of her lucrative former colony. How did Indonesia achieve this goal, particularly without the benefit of official international recognition and with powerful Western nations, including the United States, intensely focused on the economic and political reconstruction of Europe? The existing scholarship on this question primarily argues that an unyielding Indonesian armed resistance against re-occupation and significant U.S. pressure in 1949 forced the Dutch into an agreement on Indonesian independence. While the prolonged “physical revolution” and eventual U.S. pressure on the Dutch did play leading roles in bringing independence to the archipelago, the focus on these factors downplays the integral support of other actors in the struggle. Central to Indonesia’s success was the support of the international community outside of the United States and Europe, support encouraged and developed throughout the world by Indonesians engaged in an unprecedented “diplomatic revolution.” The bloody revolution on Indonesia’s soil has been well documented.1 But another crucial aspect of the revolution was the Republic of Indonesia’s international diplomacy. The diplomatic revolution abroad has received considerably less attention,2 even though it played a substantial role in the revolution’s overall success and offers a fascinating study of an unprecedented situation. Indonesians were the first colonial subjects to successfully use diplomacy as a

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weapon against a colonial power in an independence struggle. At the end of the war very few Indonesians had any experience with the official system of international relations; Dutch (and Japanese) officials had controlled the colony’s foreign affairs. Without the benefit of a slow transitional period to independence orchestrated by a colonial power, where do colonial subjects obtain such experience? Without official international recognition the Republic had little access to traditional diplomatic channels. How does an unrecognized country officially make its case to the world? Republican representatives abroad were provided an extremely limited support system and scant instructions; they literally had to make things up as they went along. Despite these challenges, Indonesia was the first decolonization case to come before the United Nations and was perhaps the most successful example of a colonized country enlisting the international community to win the struggle against their colonizers. Indonesia’s success also indicated that the system of international relations was changing dramatically with the transformation of former colonial states into independent nation-states seeking their own role in world affairs. The international support that Indonesia received from 1945 to 1948 ensured that the Indonesian question could not be ignored, despite the quasineutral attitude of the United States in this period. And when independence was achieved, the newly emerged nations that supported Indonesia gained new confidence in their ability to play significant roles in world affairs. The recognition of Indonesian independence signaled to the international community that despite the emerging Cold War, space existed outside the rival power blocs from which nations could effectively influence international affairs. Hesitant to accept a constricting bipolar worldview, at an early date Indonesians and many of their supporters insisted that there were other choices. Indonesia’s “diplomatic revolution” helped to fuel continued cooperation in world affairs among nations unwilling to commit to either side of the Cold War, and this cooperation significantly contributed to the emergence and development of the non-aligned movement in the 1950s. This chapter examines select portions of the international support that Indonesia received from 1945 to 1949. It focuses on the support of India and Australia who, along with other countries, kept the Indonesian Question in the international spotlight until the U.S. decided to put serious pressure on the Dutch in 1949. It argues that international support was not only vital to Indonesia’s victory against the Dutch, but also fundamentally affected the postwar system of international relations by initiating cooperation among newly emerged nations, some of which were seeking choices other than those that the Cold War presented.

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Initial Support: Australia On August 17, 1945, two days after the Japanese surrender, the leaders of the Republic of Indonesia (RI) declared independence. During the four years of the subsequent Indonesian Revolution, RI leaders took a two-pronged approach in the fight against Dutch attempted recolonization: a bloody perjuangan (struggle) against Dutch troops on Indonesian soil, and an artful diplomasi (diplomacy) that included significant efforts by Republican representatives abroad. Sutan Sjahrir, Mohammad Hatta, Sukarno, and other leaders believed that the revolution had to be partly won in the international arena. If the Dutch and their supporters succeeded in convincing the world that the Indonesian leaders were fanatics, that the dispute was a “domestic” issue and not one for the international community, then decolonization might take decades rather than years. Indonesian leaders discerned that to achieve independence from the Dutch expeditiously, a diplomatic revolution abroad was necessary to complement the physical revolution at home. Throughout Indonesia’s struggle, but particularly in its first eighteen months, the Republican government’s biggest challenge was to convince foreign governments that the Republic should be recognized as a government. This was widely considered a legal issue, and foreign governments, even avowedly supportive ones, were loath to step outside the boundaries of international law and begin official relations with an unrecognized government. In the weeks following the proclamation of independence, the Republic had to rely substantially on unofficial contacts to begin making its case to the international community. In numerous countries, the Indonesians conducting the diplomatic revolution on behalf of the Republic were not appointed for these roles, they independently created them. Some of these individuals later took official positions in the Republican government, but initially they served as little more than volunteers. The Republic had little choice in the matter: It did not have the means to send people abroad, it did not have internationally accepted passports to issue, it could not communicate easily and privately with representatives abroad without the assistance of a foreign government, and it lacked the international diplomatic standing necessary to make official contact with foreign governments. Given these challenges, the Republic had to accept that the initial efforts toward selling the revolution internationally would come largely from private Indonesians, mostly students and maritime workers, already abroad. In Australia an additional Indonesian group would prove to be tremendously influential: nationalists long imprisoned by the Dutch and exiled to Australian prison camps during the war. In the spring of 1943, ostensibly concerned with their influence on postwar Indonesian society if freed by the Japanese,3 the Dutch quietly transported 507 Indonesians from Tanah Merah and Tanah

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Tinggi, isolated prison camps in the jungles of New Guinea, to prisoner-of-war camps in Australia made available to the Netherlands Indies government-inexile.4 The Indonesians, some of whom had been imprisoned since the late 1920s,5 were mostly political prisoners sentenced without trials for their roles in the nationalist movement, but in Australia the Dutch labeled them POWs.6 Soon after arrival, Mohamad Bondan and other leaders of the Indonesian internees began to smuggle letters out of the Australian camp explaining that they were political prisoners of the Dutch and not POWs, and asking for their predicament to be brought to the attention of the Australian government. Bondan had worked closely with Hatta and Sjahrir in the early 1930s to establish a political party, the Pendidikan Nasional Indonesia (Indonesian Nationalist Education [PNI Baru]), and was arrested with them in 1933 and sent to Tanah Merah. Born in 1910 in Cirebon, Central Java, Bondan never completed junior high school. However, during his years interned in New Guinea, he studied history, politics, English, and economics under Hatta’s tutelage. Despite having been labeled “psychopaths” by the Netherlands Indies government, after six months in detention Bondan and the rest of the Indonesian exiles were released following visits to the camp by Australian government representatives.7 These former prisoners represented a small minority of the Indonesians in Australia during the war,8 but they were politically experienced intellectuals committed to the independence movement. Over the final eighteen months of the war in the Pacific they made contact with sympathetic Australian groups, becoming the first Indonesians to initiate substantial support for their independence movement abroad. Following the news of the proclamation, they established Committees for Indonesian Independence in Brisbane, Mackay, Melbourne, and Sydney. On September 1, the Central Committee for Indonesian Independence (CENKIM) in Brisbane, of which Bondan was secretary, issued a manifesto requesting support for their anticolonial revolution and calling on all Indonesians in Australia to mutiny.9 Until his return to Java in November 1947, Bondan helped lead CENKIM’s efforts to promote recognition of the Republic, both in Australia and abroad.10 He met with famous Dutch documentary expert Joris Ivens to discuss Indonesia Calling, a short film in support of the boycotts and the Indonesian independence movement that Ivens completed in 194611; helped produce weekly bulletins and special publications to be distributed throughout Australia and abroad, including to UN members; and established contacts with Australian businessmen concerning trade. CENKIM sent cables to foreign governments and the UN to petition for recognition of the Republic, and the committee collaborated with organizations supporting the Republic in Singapore, Egypt, India, Great Britain, and the United States.12

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Although sympathetic to the Indonesian cause, in 1945 the Australian government was too closely tied to UK and Allied foreign policy considerations to offer the Indonesians much tangible assistance with independence. Other sectors of Australian society, however, did provide such assistance. The Australian Communist Party was particularly sympathetic to Indonesia’s anticolonial struggle and it wielded considerable influence among unions. In 1944, the Australian Seamen’s Union and Indonesians from the New Guinea camps helped Indonesian seamen to form SARPELINDO, the Indonesian Seamen’s Union. In September 1945, SARPELINDO called on its members to walk off Dutch ships, and Indian, Malayan, and Chinese seamen joined them. When SARPELINDO members found cases of ammunition being loaded onto a Dutch ship for transport to Indonesia on September 21, 1945, they told their leadership, who informed the Australian Trades and Labor Council. Within a few days a boycott of Dutch shipping in Australia had begun. Over thirty Australian trade unions and four unions of Asian seamen eventually joined the boycott and Dutch ships could not get loaded, serviced, fueled, towed, or repaired. The total number of identifiable ships affected was estimated at 559.13 The boycott forced the Dutch to delay their full-scale reoccupation attempt of the Netherlands Indies. Indonesian activists and their supporters in Australia had scored a timely victory against the Dutch, providing the Republic more time to organize and solidify their position in the archipelago. The boycott, however, may have been even more significant in terms of selling the Indonesian Revolution to the world. As the boycott grew and spread to ports throughout Australia, news of the Indonesian struggle was spread abroad. Over the next two years Dutch ships would face boycotts in New Zealand, the United States, Canada, Egypt, India, Pakistan, Thailand, Burma, Ceylon, Singapore, the Philippines, and China. The Australian government under Labor Party Prime Minister Joseph Benedict Chifley at first succumbed to Dutch and Allied pressure to force the issue with Australian strikers. The government announced that if workers refused to load Dutch ships, they were prohibited from loading any ships, effectively locking them out. The unions stood their ground and the government had to give in; it could not afford to further delay ships required to provision Australian armed forces in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. Chifley consistently opposed further action against the unions despite heavy pressure from conservative opposition leader Robert Menzies.14 Chifley believed that sympathy for Indonesia in Australia came from more than just the unions and that the old colonial days were over. In July 1947 the Australian government became one of two governments to refer the Indonesian Case to the UN, the ul-

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timate international contribution in support of the Republic. The other was the interim government of India led by Jawaharlal Nehru.

Colonial Solidarity: India All of us in India have expressed our wholehearted sympathy with the Indonesian peoples and the new government they have formed. That is a welcome sign of our solidarity, but I hope we shall not leave it at that, for big issues are involved in this Indonesian struggle. We must watch and help wherever we can. —Jawaharlal Nehru, October 15, 194515

Although Australia played a crucial role in support of Indonesian independence, the Republic had no better friend than India during the Indonesian Revolution. The future prime ministers Nehru and Hatta first met in 1927 at a conference organized by the International Congress against Imperialism in Brussels and since that time they had maintained a close friendship.16 Although the interim government of independent India did not take office until September 1946, by the end of the war Nehru was relatively well known throughout the West, having maintained considerable international exposure with the spread of his writings and as a nationalist leader and close associate of Mahatma Gandhi. Nehru spread the word about the Republic from its inception and India, “the window of Indonesia to the world”17 throughout the revolution, became Indonesia’s most valuable international supporter. During the revolution New Delhi would serve as the Republic’s international communication center, meeting place, travel hub, and refuge. Even before Sukarno and Hatta proclaimed independence, Nehru backed Indonesia’s decolonization, believing that it was linked to India’s own struggle against the British.18 Nehru publicly expressed support for the Republic soon after the proclamation, and after British troops arrived in Java in late September 1945, he used their presence to criticize the British government for their role in suppressing Indonesian independence19 and to prod the British further toward the independence promised India.20 Nehru expressed total sympathy for the Indonesian struggle in early November and warned that the old days of colonialism were over: The destinies of all Asiatic nations are bound together. We [Indians and Indonesians] are partners in the struggle against European imperialism. Therefore, it is not enough merely to offer sympathy. India should give them active and constructive help. . . . I wish to

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sound a clear warning to the imperialist powers of Europe that if they do not quit Asia quickly and without obstruction, it is clearly inevitable that there will be a gigantic conflict involving the whole world. The freedom movement in Java and other Asiatic countries is not something which can be suppressed by force. . .. [ T]he urge for freedom will survive. And the flame of freedom which has been lit in Asia can result in only one thing, namely, the burning of imperialism the world over.21 Nehru proceeded to place great importance on the Indonesian Case, referring to it as the “symbol of revolt against imperialist domination” and the “acid test of the professions made by the United Nations.”22 Despite being consumed with internal problems and the slow progress toward Indian independence, Nehru proclaimed that he would have gone to Java to assist the Republic had the British not denied him permission.23 India’s own dependent status limited the help Nehru could offer, but by early 1946 he had begun to formulate strategies to assist Indonesia by providing the Republic with more international exposure. The Republican government desperately sought international recognition as it was considered the first step necessary to achieve independence.24 Indonesian leaders believed that some degree of legal recognition would gain them increased access to official diplomatic channels, substantially improving the Republic’s chances of gaining support from foreign governments and putting additional pressure on the Dutch. Throughout most of 1946, Republican leaders focused on negotiations with the Dutch regarding official recognition. Also in 1946, Nehru, feeling prohibited by international law to recognize the Republic officially, was working to provide the government as much unofficial recognition as he could.25 In a March 1946 New York Times Magazine article on colonialism, Nehru wrote that Indonesia “is a country well capable of looking after itself, with a functioning government which has obviously the support of the mass of the people, where there would certainly be peace and security if outsiders did not intervene. . .. The independence of Indonesia has to be accepted and the Government recognized.”26 The article also mentioned that a conference of Asian countries was being planned in New Delhi. The conference would focus on the common problems facing Asian countries, including independence struggles. On November 15, Republican and Dutch negotiators initialed the Linggajati Agreement, named after the Javanese mountain resort where the delegations met, and on March 25, 1947, the Agreement was signed. Article 1 began as follows: “The Netherlands Government recognizes the Government of the Republic of Indonesia as exercising de facto authority over Java, Madura and

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Sumatra.”27 Based on official Dutch recognition, however limited, Great Britain, the United States, India, Australia, China, and other nations then proceeded to recognize the same de facto authority of the Republic. Implementation of the Linggajati Agreement details quickly broke down over issues of interpretation, but Article 1 still provided the Republic with the international status necessary to more effectively proceed with its diplomatic revolution abroad. Since the conference Nehru had helped organize had begun on March 23, Dutch recognition had come at an opportune time. Nehru had invited Indonesian representatives to participate in a nongovernmental Asian Relations Conference in New Delhi in late March and early April 1947.28 Prime Minister Sjahrir joined the conference on March 31, having arrived on a private plane sent by the Indian government and welcomed at the airport by Nehru himself.29 The conference was meant to be completely unofficial, dealing mainly with cultural and economic subjects and leaving politics aside. However, many of the representatives of the twenty-nine delegations present were not content to remain completely apolitical, especially the Indonesians whose delegation had more delegates (twenty-five) than any other besides India (fifty-one).30 Indonesian delegates managed to find ways to promote the Republican government and to ask for recognition and support against the Dutch in discussions on topics as varied as health care, the use of an international language, the women’s movement, currencies, and trade unions. Linggajati Agreement recognition and the Asian Relations Conference marked a turning point for Indonesia’s foreign relations, as they facilitated the further spread of the Republic’s diplomatic revolution abroad.

From New Delhi to Lake Success The 1947 New Delhi conference provided the Republic an opportunity to make diplomatic contact with dozens of countries, including Afghanistan, Australia, Burma, Ceylon, China, Egypt, India, Iran, the Philippines, Thailand, Turkey, and Vietnam, as well as with the Arab League. From mid-1947 until Dutch recognition of Indonesian sovereignty in December 1949, Republican representatives would fan out across the globe to lobby for recognition and ultimately Indonesian independence. Among the cities to which representatives were dispatched were New York, London, Canberra, Cairo, New Delhi, Karachi, Kabul, Singapore, Bangkok, Rangoon, Manila, and Prague. Haji Agus Salim, the Republic’s Arabic-speaking deputy foreign minister and a prominent Muslim leader, traveled directly from the conference to Cairo, where Indonesian students had maintained an Indonesian independence committee since 1945.31

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Egypt granted the Republic de jure recognition on June 1, 1947, and on June 10 the two countries signed a Treaty of Friendship as well as an agreement to establish consular relations and trade between the two countries. Additional Republican diplomatic visits in the region also reaped rewards: On June 29, Lebanon granted de facto and de jure recognition to the Republic, followed by Syria (which at the time held a UN Security Council seat) and Iraq in July, Afghanistan in September, and Saudi Arabia in November.32 On July 20, 1947, the Dutch launched their first “police action,” a major military offensive against the Republic in Java and Sumatra. Within two weeks they had secured targeted cities, communication facilities, and major sources of economic production. While the campaign was successful in Indonesia, it was a disaster for the Dutch in the international community. By July the Republic’s diplomatic efforts had earned significant support abroad and numerous nations quickly came to Indonesia’s aid after the Dutch attack. The most important contributions came from India and Australia who referred the Indonesian case to the UN Security Council under separate sections of the UN Charter. The Republic had informed New Delhi in early July that a Dutch attack was imminent, and the Indian government had pushed the British and U.S. governments to put pressure on the Dutch.33 On July 21, CENKIM Secretary Bondan wrote to Australian Prime Minister Chifley: On behalf of the Indonesian people we appeal on the grounds of humanity and justice to you as the head of the Government of our nearest Southern neighbor, to use your good influences to stop the war which has now broken out in our country. . . . We believe that recent statements of presumably responsible Dutch leaders . . . show a complete disregard for the desires and aspirations of the Indonesian people, and certainly constitute a violation of the entire spirit of the Linggardjati (sic) Agreement, in which recognition of the de facto authority of the Government of the Republic was granted by the Netherlands. We believe, therefore, that only international intervention can save our country and our people. Australia has put her hand to the United Nations’ Charter designed to protect the elementary human rights of all mankind and for the prevention of outbreaks just such as this. We look to you accordingly as one of the guardians of democracy, and we plead with you to act quickly and as best you are able, before it is once more too late, and the world is involved all over again in hideous warfare.34

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After the Dutch military action was launched, India and Australia both pressed the British to refer the Indonesian case to the UN, to no avail.35 On July 28, India advised Australia that they intended to refer the case to the Security Council themselves, but Canberra convinced New Delhi to delay. John Burton, secretary of the Australian government’s Department of External Affairs, believed that the Indonesian case would end up in the Security Council one way or another and “it would be preferable for us to bring matter than for some other State such as India.”36 Burton believed that it would be difficult for Australians to accept following the lead of India, so the government asked for time to consider the situation. On July 30, the same day India formally brought the case to the Security Council, Australia also referred the matter but under a separate and more forceful section of the Charter.37 The Australian resolution was accepted for debate. The Republic’s diplomatic revolution had achieved the pinnacle of international support with referral of the Indonesian struggle to the UN Security Council. Although the Dutch would continue to try to minimize the Republic’s authority, international sympathy for the Indonesian struggle only grew stronger. Oetoyo Ramelan, Republican representative in Singapore, noted: “By going to war the Dutch may cause hostility in world opinion which they have not reckoned on.”38 On August 14, 1947, despite Dutch protests, Sjahrir addressed the UN in Lake Success, New York, providing the Republic with another important level of international recognition. In August 1947, the Indonesian case was placed under the jurisdiction of a Good Offices Committee (GOC), established by the Security Council. Indonesia chose Australia for membership, the Netherlands selected Belgium, and both agreed on the United States as the third member. With Indonesian independence in the hands of the UN, it was clear that the Netherlands had failed to convince the world that the revolution was a “domestic issue” for them to handle in isolation. However, the Dutch still had the support of the U.S. government. The State Department continued to believe that the failure of the Netherlands “to retain very considerable stake in NEI” (Netherlands East Indies) threatened the stability of the Dutch government and the U.S. position in Western Europe.39 Although the GOC did not bring rapid settlement to the matter, its formation indicated that the Republic and its supporters abroad had successfully ensured that the Indonesian struggle would remain in the brightest international spotlight available.

The United States Sees the (International) Light In December 1948, the Dutch again tried to force the Republic to accept their terms, launching a second “police action” despite U.S. insistence they hold to

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the cease-fire.40 Throughout its negotiations with the Dutch under the auspices of the GOC, the Republic stayed in close contact with India. Nehru’s international stature was advanced in August 1947 when he became the first prime minister of independent India, and as an independent head of state, Nehru continued to work on expanding recognition of the Republic within the UN and in foreign capitals.41 In December 1948, with the second Dutch “police action” imminent, he wrote to Stafford Cripps, UK minister for economic affairs, declaring the Dutch to be “excessively stupid and lacking in understanding.” But he went on to argue that the Dutch “could never act in the way they have done unless they had the active or the passive support of the U.S.A. and the U.K. Indeed the Dutch are being helped by the U.S.A. under the Marshall Aid Plan. This help no doubt flows into Indonesia.”42 Nehru offered the Republican government shelter in India if the Dutch attacked and stepped up India’s pro-Republic diplomatic campaign abroad. In the weeks following the December 20 “police action,” the nearly universal condemnation of the attack by the international community helped to convince the U.S. government to change American policy toward the Netherlands.43 U.S. officials feared that without a change in American policy, tensions between Asia and the West would be seriously aggravated, leading to the growth of a pan-Asia movement that the U.S. ambassador to India considered “extremely dangerous” to the United States.44 A major development pushing the United States toward the international community and away from the Dutch was Nehru’s announcement on January 2, 1949 that the Indian government would convene a conference of Asian nations to protest Dutch actions in Indonesia.45 The conference on Indonesia was held in New Delhi on January 20–23 with representatives from the governments of Afghanistan, Australia, Burma, Ceylon, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen, and observers from the governments of China, Nepal, New Zealand, and Thailand.46 The conference transmitted to the UN three resolutions, provisions of which were incorporated into the resolution adopted by the Security Council on January 28. Nehru believed that the Security Council resolution followed the lead of the New Delhi conference on numerous matters, and that: From the point of view of Asia, this conference has been a turning point in history. . . . It means new alignments and a new balance of power, if not now, then in the near future. We have stated repeatedly that we do not want to form a new bloc of nations or to range ourselves against any existing bloc. Nevertheless, it is inevitable that as a result of this Conference and other causes, the countries

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of Asia will come closer together and that India will play a leading part in this.47 Under pressure from the international community, in early 1949 the United States finally put its full weight on the Netherlands government to force them into an agreement on Indonesian independence. The United States had to accept that the international system had developed an influential new bloc. On December 27, 1949, the Dutch officially transferred internationally recognized, de jure sovereignty over the archipelago to Indonesians.

Lining Up for Non-Alignment By 1949 the Cold War was heating up. Acrimonious debate in the Security Council over the preceding three years made it quite clear that two opposing power blocs were jockeying for position. The United States feared that the creation of an “Asian bloc” would further complicate international affairs and might develop into a dangerous opponent of the United States. But Nehru had made it quite clear that India had no intention to establish such a bloc. In guidelines written for the UN General Assembly session of September 12, 1948, Nehru asserted: “[I]t is entirely wrong for any representative to talk in terms of India being the leader in any part of Asia or to discuss the formation of any Asian bloc. This does not help us in any way and merely irritates others and creates suspicion.”48 In March 1949 he reiterated: “We have stated repeatedly that our foreign policy is one to keep apart from big blocs of nations—rival blocs—and to be friendly to all countries and not become entangled in any alliances, military or other, that might drag us into any possible conflict.”49 India’s foreign policy was evolving in direct contrast to Cold War developments. As early as September 1946, Nehru had stated, “In the sphere of foreign affairs, India will follow an independent policy, keeping away from the power politics of groups aligned one against another.”50 The Republic of Indonesia’s close relationship with India certainly influenced the development of the central tenets of Indonesian foreign policy as well. In a September 2, 1948, speech entitled “Rowing between Two Coral Reefs,”51 Indonesian Prime Minister Hatta remarked: Must we Indonesians, who are fighting for our independence as a Nation and as a State, make our choice only between being proRussia or pro-America? Is there no other position we can take in the pursuit of our ideals? The Government is of the opinion that the stand we must adopt is one of ensuring that we do not become an

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object in the area of international politics, but rather that we must continue to be a subject with the right to determine our own position, with the right to fight for our own goal—the goal of a fully Independent Indonesia.52 When the Republic had achieved full independence, it owed a great deal of its success to its adoption of an Asia-centric, non-aligned foreign policy. Indonesia’s successful use of non-alignment, combined with the dramatic changes to the system of international relations signified by the 1949 New Delhi conference, can be seen as triggering the emergence of the non-aligned movement. The decision to rely predominantly on the support of Australia, India, and other Asian countries instead of the United States, Great Britain, or the Soviet Union meant that Indonesia would not have to compromise her full independence by joining a Cold War power bloc. Choosing non-alignment also provided the Republic with the opportunity to secure what it felt was its rightful position of leadership among Afro-Asian countries. Had the Republic chosen to become an aligned nation, an independent position of global leadership was not a realistic possibility. In April 1955, Indonesia made considerable progress toward being recognized as a world leader by hosting the Bandung Conference of Afro-Asian nations. If the New Delhi conferences started the non-aligned movement, Bandung pushed it into full swing. In his opening address to the conference, President Sukarno stated: It was at that sad but glorious moment in our national history [the beginning of 1949] that our good neighbor India convened a Conference of Asian and African Nations in New Delhi, to protest against the injustice committed against Indonesia and to give support to our struggle. . . . Never before in the history of mankind has such a solidarity of Asian and African peoples been shown for the rescue of a fellow Asian Nation in danger. . . . Perhaps in some ways the Conference which has assembled here today has some roots in that manifestation of Asian-African solidarity six years ago. . . . This Conference is not to oppose each other, it is a conference of brotherhood . . . It is not an exclusive club either, not a bloc which seeks to oppose any other bloc. Rather it is a body of enlightened, tolerant opinion which seeks to impress upon the world that all men and all countries have their place under the sun . . .53

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Twenty-nine nations from Asia and Africa were represented. Of the fifteen countries that sent delegations to the 1949 New Delhi conference, fourteen sent participants to Bandung.54 Nehru, Prime Minister Chou Enlai of China, Prime Minister Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Prime Minister Mohammed Ali of Pakistan, and Prime Minister U Nu of Burma all attended. There was an almost equal mix of aligned and non-aligned representation but the conference went smoothly and was heralded as a great success, at least symbolically. No major resolutions were produced, but Asian and African former colonies had gathered together in newly independent Indonesia and successfully demonstrated that they would play a major role in the international system. In the decade following the conference, more than thirty additional Asian and African nations would gain independence. As host, Indonesia had returned to the international spotlight that it had exploited so skillfully during the revolution.

Conclusion In the wake of World War II the Indonesian case brought together for the first time a large group of Asian and African countries sympathetic to independence movements. Some countries, like India, had not yet received the independence promised them, others, like Australia, were independent but still searching for their own voice on the world stage. These countries were not major powers, and in isolation they struggled to have their concerns heard by the international community. But when these countries worked together on an issue their influence on world affairs became more significant. The test case for cooperation was Indonesia’s struggle against the Dutch, the successful outcome of which served to coalesce this new community of nations. Cooperation among these countries was triggered by Indonesians living abroad who sought international support for their independence in an unofficial “diplomatic revolution,” even before independence was officially proclaimed by leaders of the Republic of Indonesia. After the proclamation, Indonesian students and workers abroad had a government rather than a movement to defend, and the “diplomatic revolution” slowly became more official as Republican leaders began to dispatch guidance and manpower abroad. Support for Indonesia came quickly; making the case for independence came easily in countries that had experienced the deleterious effects of imperialism in one way or another. But significant support from powerful Western countries that were largely determining the shape of the postwar world came more slowly, despite a concentrated effort by Indonesians to gain their sympathy in the earliest days of the revolution.55 It became clear to the Republic that its diplo-

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matic revolution would have to gain steam in the non-Western world before it could be successful in the West. Developments in Australia and India played the most significant roles in the early stages of Indonesia’s diplomatic revolution. But it was India, behind the vociferous support of Nehru, that would lead the organization of international efforts against Dutch recolonization and in the process begin to bring nonWestern countries together in support of the Republic. Indonesian leaders would use this support not only to defeat the Dutch, but also to legitimate their own existence through international recognition. The 1947 Asian Relations Conference in New Delhi was the first step in this direction, but the 1949 conference on Indonesia in the fully independent Indian capital was the most important step. The fifteen countries officially represented at the conference made significant and unprecedented contributions to world affairs by influencing UN Security Council decisions and U.S. foreign policy. Their success indicated that new nations did not have to compromise their independence and succumb to pressures to join a Cold War bloc, that the international system was changing, and that other choices were developing, such as non-alignment. And Indonesia’s hosting of the 1955 Bandung Conference demonstrated that a newly emerged, non-aligned nation could develop a leading role in world affairs without directly taking sides in the Cold War.

Notes 1. George Kahin’s Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1952) is the seminal work on the revolution. For general coverage, see also Anthony Reid, The Indonesian National Revolution, 1945–50 (Hawthorn, Victoria: Longman, 1974), and for more region-focused studies, Benedict Anderson, Java in a Time of Revolution: Occupation and Resistance, 1944–1946 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1972); Robert Cribb, Gangsters and Revolutionaries: The Jakarta People’s Militia and the Indonesian Revolution, 1945–49 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991); William Frederick, Visions and Heat (Athens: Ohio University, 1989); Audrey Kahin, ed., Regional Dynamics of the Indonesian Revolution: Unity from Diversity (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1985); Anton Lucas, One Soul One Struggle: Region and Revolution in Indonesia (Sydney: Asian Studies Association of Australia, 1991); Anthony Reid, The Blood of the People: Revolution and the End of Traditional Rule in Northern Sumatra (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University, 1979); Nazaruddin Sjamsuddin, Revolusi di Serambi Mekah: Perjuangan Kemerdekaan dan Pertarungan politik di Aceh, 1945–49 (Jakarta: Universitas Indonesia, 1999); and John Smail, Bandung in the Early Revolution, 1945–46 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 1964), among others. 2. There is no single comprehensive work on the efforts of RI representatives abroad. For scholarship on some of these efforts in particular areas, see, for example: Mohamad Bondan, Genderang Proklamasi di Luar Negeri (Jakarta: KAWAL, 1971);

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Muhammad Zein Hassan, Diplomasi Revolusi Indonesia di Luar Negeri (Jakarta: Butan Bintang, 1980); Yong Mun Cheong, The Indonesian Revolution and the Singapore Connection (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2003); and Paul Gardner, Shared Hopes, Separate Fears: Fifty Years of U.S.–Indonesian Relations (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997). 3. Leaders of the former prisoners told Rupert Lockwood in 1944 and 1945 that they believed this was the reason for their transport. See Rupert Lockwood, “The Indonesian Exiles in Australia, 1942–47,” Indonesia 10 (October 1970): 41. 4. Tanah Merah and Tanah Tinggi were located on the Digul River in southwestern New Guinea. The exiles were relocated to camps near Liverpool and Cowra in New South Wales. 5. The Dutch originally established Tanah Merah to hold those accused of involvement in the 1926–1927 communist-led rebellions in Java and Sumatra. 6. Molly Bondan, Spanning a Revolution (Jakarta: Pustaka Sinar Harapan, 1992), 192. 7. In a memorandum to the Australian government Charles van der Plas, Chief Commissioner for the Netherlands Indies, divided the Indonesian prisoners into two groups: “extremely dangerous psychopaths” and “less dangerous psychopaths.” Letter (Most Secret) to Colonel W.H. Hodgson, Secretary, Department of External Affairs, February 8, 1943 (MP742/1/0, 255/2/676). As quoted in Frank C. Bennett Jr., The Return of the Exiles: Australia’s Repatriation of the Indonesians, 1945–47 (Victoria, Australia: Monash University Press, 2003), 33. 8. Approximately 10,000 Indonesians lived in Australia between 1942 and 1945. See Rupert Lockwood, Black Armada: Australia and the Struggle for Indonesian Independence, 1942-49 (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1982), 60; O’Hare and Reid, Australia dan Perjuangan Kemerdekaan Indonesia (Jakarta: PT Gramedia Pustaka Utama, 1995); Bennett, The Return of the Exiles, 2. 9. Manifesto, Waterside Workers’ Federation of Australia, Indonesia File (January 1945–June 1949), as described in Margaret George, Australia and the Indonesian Revolution (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1980), 36. See also Lockwood, “The Indonesian Exiles in Australia, 1942–47,” 49. 10. Almost all the exiles from the New Guinea camps returned to Indonesia on October 13, 1945 aboard the British merchant troopship Esperance Bay. After November 19, 1946, Bondan was one of only two CENKIM members remaining in Australia. According to Molly Bondan, Bondan’s wife, the international role her husband played for the Republic grew increasingly important after this date due to Bondan’s English skills and organizational ability. See Bondan, Spanning a Revolution, 216. 11. Ivens was hired by the Netherlands Indies Government-in-Exile to film their “liberation” of the Indies. However, once he arrived in Australia and learned of the Indonesian independence movement, he resigned his position and worked in support of the Indonesians. See Kees Bakker, ed., Joris Ivens and the Documentary Context (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1999), 40. 12. Bondan, Spanning a Revolution, 217–37. 13. Lockwood, Black Armada, 4. 14. Menzies became prime minister in 1949. 15. Statement to the press, Allahabad. See Nehru, Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, edited by S. Gopal, vol. 14 (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1981): 455.

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16. Nehru, Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, second series, edited by S. Gopal, vol. 12 (New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, 1984), 380. See also Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 14, 557, and Ide Anak Agung Gde Agung, Twenty Years Indonesian Foreign Policy 1945–1965 (The Hague: Mouton, 1973), 23. 17. Nehru to the Premiers of Provinces, May 14, 1949, in Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, second series, vol. 11, 269. 18. In a July 17, 1945 speech, Nehru referred to Java and Sumatra in declaring that “our struggle is but a part of the struggle of all the suppressed peoples, and we are not to lose sight of this fact.” In a September 30, 1945 press statement, Nehru stated that the Indian National Congress had friendly contacts with the Indonesian independence movement “long before the last war began.” In an October 9, 1945 interview, Nehru said, “I believe that our freedom in India or Java or elsewhere hangs together and if I can serve the cause of freedom in Java now better than in India, I shall certainly go there.” See Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 14, 56, 448, 452. 19. Following the death of British Brigadier-General Mallaby in a confused skirmish with Indonesian forces, on November 9, 1945, the British ordered Indonesian leaders to surrender unconditionally. 20. In a September 1945 press statement, Nehru criticized the British for using Indian troops in Java. In December he stated, “In South East Asia, Indonesia and IndoChina are carrying on a heroic struggle against imperialism, and in both, Britain has stepped in to help in crushing the people”; in January 1946 he referred to British policy in Indonesia to imply that imperialists cannot be trusted and India should be wary about British promises regarding Indian independence. Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 14, 325, 407, 448. 21. Speech at Bombay, November 9, 1945, ibid., 307. 22. Interview to the press, Lucknow, November 17, 1945, The Leader, November 18, 1945, in ibid., 460. 23. Cable, Addison to Commonwealth Government, October 17, 1945, in W.J. Hudson and Wendy Way, eds., Documents on Australian Foreign Policy 1937–49, vol. 8 (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1989), 514–15. 24. As early as September 6, 1945, Sukarno had stated, “our goal is to obtain international recognition” (Tujuan kami ialah memperoleh pengakuan internasional). Jan Bouwer, Het Vermoorde Land (Franeker: Van Wijnen, 1988), 391, 394, as quoted in H. Rosihan Anwar, Bertumbuh Melawan Arus (Jakarta: PDP Guntur 49, 2001), 84. 25. On October 25, 1946, Nehru proposed one such plan, a scholarship program that brought Indonesian students from the Republic to Indian universities, and he admitted that this would be considered unofficial recognition of the Republic. Note to Shafaat Ahmed Khan, October 25, 1946, in Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, second series, vol. 1, 531. 26. Jawaharlal Nehru, “Colonialism Must Go,” New York Times Magazine, March 3, 1946, 53–54. 27. As reprinted in Alastair M. Taylor, Indonesian Independence and the United Nations (London: Stevens & Sons, 1960), 464. 28. The Republic used the Linggajati recognition to justify their participation in foreign relations, but the Dutch disagreed and would not assist the Indonesians in traveling to the conference. The main delegation of twenty-five Republicans (twenty-four according to Sastroamijoyo) had to basically “hitch” a ride to Singapore on the plane

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of an Egyptian diplomat sent to make contact with the RI. The passengers exceeded the loading capacity but the pilot was persuaded that the passengers were thin and light because during the revolution they “had in general been lacking in nutritious food.” See Ali Sastroamijoyo, Milestones on My Journey: The Memoirs of Ali Sastroamijoyo, Indonesian Patriot and Political Leader, C.L.M. Penders, ed. (St Lucia: University of Queensland, 1979), 134–35. 29. Rudolf Mrazek, Sjahrir: Politics and Exile in Indonesia (Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 1994), 335. 30. Asian Relations Organization, Asian Relations: Report of the Proceedings and Documentation of the First Asian Relations Conference (New Delhi: Asian Relations Organization, 1948), 8. 31. On November 18, 1946 the Arab League, pressed by Indonesian students in Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, had recommended that its members recognize the Republic but this information did not reach Republican leaders until March 1947. Kirdi Dipoyudo, “Indonesia’s Foreign Policy towards the Middle East and Africa,” The Indonesian Quarterly 33, no. 4 (October 1985). 475. 32. Hassan, Diplomasi Revolusi Indonesia di Luar Negeri, 197–225. See also Abu Hanifah, Tales of a Revolution (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1972), 263; Dipoyudo, “Indonesia’s Foreign Policy towards the Middle East and Africa”; and Evelyn Colbert, Southeast Asia in International Politics 1941–1956 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1977), 79. 33. Nehru cables to Lord Listowel, July 8, 18, 22, 1947, in Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, second series, vol. 3, 359–61. See also Cablegram 390, Mackay to Chifley, July 24, 1947, and Cablegram 155, Attlee to Chifley, July 25, 1947, in Philip Dorling, ed., Documents on Australian Foreign Policy 1937–49, vol. 11 (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1994), 160–61. 34. Bondan to Chifley, July 21, 1947, in Dorling, ed., Documents on Australian Foreign Policy, vol. 11, 134–36. 35. Cables to V.K. Krishna Menon, July 22, 25, 26, and 28, 1947, in Gopal, ed., Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, second series, vol. 3, 362–67. Cablegram 148, Addison to Australian Government, July 18, 1947; Cablegrams 190 and 193, Australian Government to Addison and Fraser, July 24, 1947; Cablegram 153, Addison to Australian Government, July 24, 1947, in Dorling, ed., Documents on Australian Foreign Policy, vol. 11, 126–51. 36. Cablegram 31, Burton to Evatt, July 23, 1947, in Dorling, ed., Documents on Australian Foreign Policy vol. 11, 139–40. 37. Burton later admitted that Australia took a “dishonest step” in asking India to delay. John Burton, “Indonesia: Unfinished Diplomacy,” in John Legge, ed., New Directions in Australian Foreign Policy: Australia and Indonesia 1945–50 (Clayton, Victoria: Monash Asia Institute, 1997), 38. 38. New York Times, July 22, 1947, 2. 39. Acting Secretary of State to the Consulate General at Batavia, December 31, 1947, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1947, vol. 6, 1100. 40. The Department of State to the Netherlands Embassy, December 7, 1948, FRUS, 1948, vol. 6, 531–35. 41. For example, Nehru proposed Republican membership in the UN’s Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) in mid-1948. Inaugural address,

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ECAFE third session, Udagamandalam, June 1, 1948, in Gopal, ed., Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, second series, vol. 6, 461. On an official diplomatic trip abroad in late 1948, Nehru stressed support for the Republic in London, Cairo, and Paris, where he met with “nearly every prominent” UN delegate, including those from the United States, USSR, UK, and China. Nehru to cabinet members after visit, November 6, 1948, in ibid., vol. 8, 296–300. 42. Nehru to Stafford Cripps, December 17/18, 1948, in ibid., 336–37. In mid-1948, Sumitro Djojohadikusumo, Republican representative in New York, had publicly targeted Marshall Plan aid to the Netherlands, accusing the Dutch of spending $1 million a day of this aid to make war preparations in Indonesia. John Coast, Recruit to Revolution: Adventure and Politics in Indonesia (London: Christophers, 1952), 139. 43. Even the formerly pro-Dutch New York Times editorial page charged “the prestige of the (Security) council has already suffered, as has the prestige of the white man throughout Asia and the prestige of the Democratic nations throughout the world.” The “wrong and hasty action” by the Dutch “was the height of folly, quite apart from its shocking moral aspects,” New York Times, December 26, 1948, E6. 44. Henderson to Lovett, January 6, 1949, 890.00/1-549, U.S. Department of State Records, Record Group 59, National Archives, Washington, DC. As quoted in Robert J. McMahon, Colonialism and Cold War: The United States and the Struggle for Indonesian Independence, 1945–49 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), 268–69. 45. Memorandum by Lovett, January 11, 1949, FRUS, 1949, vol. 7, no. 1, 139–41. 46. India, Pakistan, Burma, Ceylon, and Saudi Arabia had all banned the Dutch from using their transit facilities before the conference began. 47. Letter to the Premiers of Provinces, February 3, 1949, Gopal, ed., Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Second Series, vol. 9, 297–98. 48. S. Gopal and Uma Iyengar, eds., The Essential Writings of Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 2 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), 237. 49. Ibid., 247. 50. Interview to the press, New Delhi, September 26, 1946, in Gopal, ed., Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Second Series, vol. 1, 492. 51. This is a literal translation of mendayung antara dua karang, and is the usual English translation of the title of this famous speech, although “cliffs” is sometimes used in place of “coral reefs.” John Echols and Hassan Shadily’s Kamus Indonesia– Inggris (Indonesian–English Dictionary) (Jakarta: PT Gramedia, 1992) also translates this phrase as “between the devil and the deep blue sea” (see entry for “dayung”). 52. As reprinted in Roeslan Abdulgani, “The Origins of the Concept ‘Free and Active’ in Indonesian Foreign Policy,” The Indonesian Quarterly 4, no. 1 (October 1975), 9–10. 53. Muhammad Tito, ed., Documents of Asian-African Conference (Bandung: N.p., 1980), 38–39. 54. Only Australia was not invited to Bandung. Indonesian Prime Minister Ali Sastroamidjojo claimed that Australia was not invited “because Australia is a separate continent,” although this did not seem to matter in New Delhi when Australia was providing major support for Indonesian independence. See G.H. Jansen, Nonalignment and the Afro-Asian States (New York: Praeger, 1966), 177. 55. The first Westerners to visit Indonesia in September 1945 found painted “on public buildings, fences, street cars, houses—wherever there was space” English phrases

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such as “Government of the people, by the people, for the people”; “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”; “Give us liberty or give us death”; “We need just plain independence”; “Gentlemen, remember the Atlantic Charter promises self-determination to all nations.” Frederick E. Crockett, “How the Trouble Began in Java,” Harper’s Magazine (March 1946): 279–84; Harold Isaacs, No Peace for Asia (New York: Macmillan, 1947), 122; Sydney Morning Herald, September 25, 1945, p. 3, and October 9, 1945, p. 3.

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10. Malaysia during the Early Cold War Era: The War in Indochina and Malaya, 1946–1963 Danny Wong Tze Ken

The beginning of the Cold War in Asia is marked in Malaysia with the communist-led armed insurgency, officially known as the Emergency (1948– 1960). During the insurgency period, Malaya was also finding a foothold toward gaining independence from British rule. This was soon followed by the transformation of Malaya into the new nation of Malaysia in 1963. While these events were taking place in Malaya, nationalists in Vietnam and Indochina were fighting their colonial master, the French. A struggle that initially took the form of an anticolonial war soon escalated into an ideological struggle between a communist-led Vietnamese regime in the north and an anticommunist Vietnamese government in the south. This inevitably made the struggle in Vietnam part of the Cold War in Asia. Efforts to overcome its internal communist insurgency inevitably also drew Malaya into the larger context of the Cold War. In this chapter, I discuss the Malayan response to the war in Indochina during a period when it was negotiating between a state of emergency and the march toward independence. Divided into three parts, the first part of the chapter focuses on the effect of the war in Indochina—in particular in Vietnam—on the war against communism by the British government in Malaya. In the second part, I examine the impact of the Viet Minh victory in Indochina on the communist armed struggle in Malaya and the attempt by the United States to drag Malaya into the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, the regional defense pact, and how the British government guided Malaya away from this defense arrangement. I argue that while the effect was not immediate nor tangible in the sense of having a

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domino effect as predicted by some contemporary strategists, nevertheless it had a long-term effect on Malaya’s postures in international relations and its defense policy. Attention will be given to the adoption of an anticommunist stance by postindependence Malaya as evident by the support it gave to the government in South Vietnam.

Background: The Communist Party of Malaya and Its Early Struggle in Malaya Communism in Malaya had its origins in the Nanyang (South Sea) Communist Party in Singapore in 1930. Prior to that, the initiative to spread Communism was in the hands of agents from the Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI). The PKI link, however, weakened after the failed PKI uprising in Indonesia in 1926.1 Hence, when the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) was formed in 1930, it was placed under the control of the Comintern and received directions through the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Hong Kong and Canton (Guangzhou) as it was regarded as the South Sea branch of the CCP. It is interesting to note that Ho Chi Minh, who was to become leader of the Communist-led Democratic Republic of Vietnam and who was a Comintern agent at that time, is reported to have played an important part in establishing the CPM.2 In view of the nature of its international links with the CCP, the CPM was mainly a Chinese-dominated organization. In the early days, the CPM functioned under the disguise of the General Labour Union. Before World War II, the CPM was banned by the British colonial administration, which was sensitive toward activities of such a nature. However, at that stage, the CPM did not constitute a real threat to the colonial administration. Nonetheless, the British pursued the CPM when the party tried to stir up civil unrest through the General Labour Union. It is difficult to ascertain whether the CPM received any material support from the CCP or Comintern. However, moral support in the form of training and leadership personnel were common. In 1937, for instance, the CPM welcomed the arrival of Lai Teck and a group of trained cadres from the Comintern through Hong Kong to help settle its internal problems.3 Ironically, Lai Teck, of Vietnamese origin, who soon became the CPM secretary general, was a multiple agent who was at that time in the pay of the British administration. The CPM was outlawed until the outbreak of the Pacific War when the Japanese invasion of Malaya was imminent. Just before the outbreak of the war, the CPM youth organization organized the “Malayan Overseas Chinese AntiJapanese Mobilization Society.” The CPM shifted from its anti-British “imperial” stand to support the British in the war against Japan.

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The British government, alarmed by the rapid advance of the Japanese army at the end of 1941, agreed to the inclusion of the CPM for the defense of Malaya and Singapore.4 After the fall of Singapore, the remnants of CPM forces under the British organized themselves into the Malayan People’s AntiJapanese Army (MPAJA) and carried out resistance activities against the Japanese army and its collaborators. The British were to cooperate with the MPAJA through the Southeast Asia Command (SEAC). Under an agreement with the SEAC, the MPAJA received training and armed supplies in return for cooperation with the Allies against the Japanese. The war not only legalized the CPM, but actually strengthened it morally and materially—a consequence that eventually proved almost disastrous for the British after the war. The victory over Japan in August 1945 was quickly manipulated by the CPM’s MPAJA, which marched into towns portraying themselves as the sole victor and liberator against the Japanese army. The sudden surrender of the Japanese forces left a power vacuum—an interregnum that saw the MPAJA virtually take over half the country.5 It was during this brief period that the MPAJA carried out a clean-up campaign against those who had collaborated with the Japanese. The interregnum also later proved to be significant in the development of race relations in Malaysia. The returning British lavished decorations and medals on the MPAJA members, with a contingent scheduled to take part in the victory parade in London. The British were quick to request the disbandment of the MPAJA. The CPM leadership complied, but not without reservations. While many weapons were surrendered, many others were not accounted for. Between 1945 and 1948, the CPM was allowed to carry out its activities openly. This situation was quickly exploited by the CPM, which again began to organize labor strikes throughout Malaya and Singapore.6 The British clampdown on CPM activities forced the CPM to resort to subversion. This eventually culminated in the launching of an armed rebellion against the British in 1948. For twelve years until 1960, the whole of Malaya was engaged in the battle against communism. Officially, the period is known as the Emergency, characterized by the state of emergency proclaimed in the country throughout the twelve years. The damage inflicted was significant; not only was development hampered, but many lives—both civilian and military—were lost. The twelve-year Emergency also heightened racial tensions in Malaya as the CPM was largely Chinese (more than 90 percent). One interesting development in the CPM during this period was the support it gave to the Viet Minh in the latter’s struggle against the French. In early 1947, the Viet Minh issued an appeal for volunteers from neighboring communist parties to help in the communist effort in Indochina, and the MPAJA

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ex-Comrades Association and its branches started to collect funds to help the Viet Minh, partly to finance its “volunteers.” A number of ex-MPAJA personnel, sensing that the party might start a war in Malaya in which they could see no prospect of success, volunteered and were sent to Indochina.7 This development demonstrated the existence of personnel movements between communists in the two countries.

Malaya’s Emergency and the War in Indochina In Malaya, the immediate post–World War II period was characterized by a volatile political scenario. First, left-wing movements thrived, especially under Britain’s willingness to accommodate the CPM, its wartime ally. At the same time, the noose was getting tighter as the British tried to exert control over the communists. Chief on the priority list was the disarmament of the CPM fighting wing, the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army. The British government requested the CPM to disband the MPAJA units, and weapons supplied during the Japanese War were to be surrendered in exchange for cash rewards. Second, there was a huge outpouring of dissatisfaction about the Malayan Union by the Malay population of the country. When the British returned to Malaya after the war, they came with a new administrative scheme known as the Malayan Union.8 The scheme involved the grouping together of the various Malay states along with the two Straits settlements of Penang and Malacca. Singapore, however, was excluded. The hue and cry of the Malays targeted the manner in which the British had obtained the agreement of the nine Malay paramount rulers (sultans) to consent to the Union, which usurped the sovereignty of the Malay rulers, and the relative ease with which citizenship was to be granted. This second issue was particularly pertinent as the Malayan Union adopted the jus soli principle in granting citizenship, which would allow many Chinese and Indians to become citizens. The Malays were clearly wary of this development and were adamant in opposing it. The Malays’ protests were successful, and the Malayan Union was replaced by the Federation of Malaya Agreement of February 1, 1948. The new agreement, however, included strict requirements on citizenship. Communist Party dissatisfaction with the ongoing political processes probably also contributed to its decision to launch an armed struggle to achieve its goal of establishing a socialist republic in Malaya. In June 1948, the CPM launched an all-out armed insurgency against the British government and the Federation of Malaya.9 The insurrection caught the British by surprise as it soon found itself facing a formidable enemy with sufficient military supplies and ability to challenge their rule in Malaya. The first

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three years of this insurgency (Malayan Emergency) were a difficult period for the British government and its local allies. The initiative was in the hands of the CPM whose actions were not matched with efficient and effective reactions from the British government. Still exhausted from World War II, the British government was ill equipped to face fresh challenges from the CPM. During this period, the CPM forces scored several important successes, including the killing of British High Commissioner Sir Henry Gurney in 1951.10 It was only after 1951 that the government was able to recapture the initiative, resulting in the CPM taking a beating. The communist insurgency in Malaya reached a stalemate point in 1953 when the CPM lost the initiative in prosecuting the war. The loss of initiative was mainly due to three reasons. First, the CPM had lost many of its experienced leaders during the first four years of the Emergency, leaving the party with many new and younger leaders who lacked experience in armed struggle. Second, closely linked to the first, was the success of the resettlement program introduced by the British government. The program was aimed at cutting off popular support to the CPM through the introduction of new settlements that moved the squatter populations living at the periphery of the rural jungle areas within the confines of fenced settlements. Previously, the squatters were identified as the main source of support for the CPM. Third, just as the CPM was losing the initiative, the government forces, which consisted of both locally raised forces and troops from Commonwealth countries, gained the upper hand in the fight against the CPM in jungle warfare. As a result, the CPM began a tactical retreat to northern Malaya bordering Thailand in 1953–1954.11 This withdrawal meant that many states and regions were declared free from communist threat. On the political front, the process toward independence began. The British government in Malaya allowed the establishment of political parties and provided for political representation at various levels. Due political process was looked upon as an alternative to what the communists were creating. Both developments, however, did not mean that the CPM was giving up the fight, but it was clear that after 1953, the CPM threat to the security of the country had been considerably reduced. The move toward political development and the talk of possible independence in the notso-distant future began to dominate the local scenario, giving the impression that the communist insurgency was almost ended. The increasing number of areas declared as “white areas,” freed from communist threat, also contributed to this sense of security. However, such an impression was far from reality as the CPM continued to pose a security threat to the country and could even derail the political process through its armed struggle and propaganda campaigns. In the meantime, the decision makers were still wary of the security threat, with possible external impetus contributing to such perceptions. The

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British leaders were proud of their success in controlling the CPM threat in Malaya, but looming behind this relative success was the external factor of communist threats elsewhere in Southeast Asia that was having a negative effect on the political development in the country. The focal hotspot elsewhere in Southeast Asia during the course of the Malayan Emergency was Indochina. The Viet Minh’s war of independence against the French that began in December 1946 did not attract the attention of the Malayan policymakers and the Malayan public, at least initially. Local events such as the postwar reconstruction process and the newly discovered political consciousness dominated the imagination of Malayans at that time. When the war in Indochina was gaining momentum in 1948–1949, a parallel development had started in Malaya— the CPM armed insurgency against British rule. It was not until 1953 that the attention of the Malayan public was being drawn to the events taking place in Indochina. The catalyst event was the Viet Minh push into Laotian territory in March and April 1953 that threatened Luang Prabang, the royal capital of the country.12 The event was reported in the Malayan press as having possible long-term implications in Malaya. The fear was that the event would have a chain-reaction effect on countries in Southeast Asia that were facing communist-led armed insurgencies. In Malaya, for instance, the CPM could be encouraged by the event to launch further operations against government troops. In fact, the progress made by the Viet Minh did have a direct influence on the morale of the CPM. When the Viet Minh were making good progress in Vietnam and Laos, the surrender rate of the CPM to Malayan security forces under amnesty plans offered by the Malayan government was detected to have declined significantly.13 Even though Malaya was not immediately threatened by events in Indochina, the event in Laos was definitely a cause for concern for British policymakers. The outlook was not positive, as British policymakers expressed concern that the likely intensification of communist military and propaganda pressure in Indochina–Thailand was part of what was considered the long-term “China–Soviet determination to open up a full-scale Korean War in that strategically vital part of Southeast Asia.”14 Such concern was genuine, as evident from the visit of Sir Malcolm MacDonald, the British commissioner-general in Southeast Asia, to Saigon in May for the purpose of obtaining assurance from the French leaders in Indochina that the deterioration of the military and political situation was not likely to continue. MacDonald’s concern was Malaya. It was feared that if things went unchecked in Indochina, they would pose a potential danger to Malaya.15 For Britain, the grim situation in Indochina still would not pose a direct external threat to Malaya in as so far as Thailand remained secure from the com-

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munists.16 However, Britain was not willing to get directly involved in Indochina. It feared that direct China intervention on behalf of the communist forces in Indochina would “result in another general struggle in the Far East between Western Powers and Soviet-directed imperialism.”17 The Emergency in Malaya and Britain’s involvement in the Korean War had been very costly affairs, and London intended to stay out of a new conflict in Vietnam. The British view was not shared by the United States, which was keen to involve Britain in helping to defend Indochina. This was clearly stated by the U.S. ambassador to Indochina, Donald Heath, who warned that the loss of northern Indochina to the communists—a possibility in 1953—”would imperil the Free World’s whole position along the southern part of the Asian continent.” Just to emphasize his point, Heath further insisted that the efforts of the French Expeditionary Corps and the three national armies of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia were not only fighting off communist attempts to subdue these states, but also protecting the independence of Southeast Asia. “I will even say they are struggling for the security and liberty of Southern Asia,”18 which included Malaya. Heath’s point was later reinforced by the statement of Vice President Richard Nixon, who was on a tour of Southeast Asia. Nixon warned Britain that Southeast Asia, including Malaya, would lose if the communists won in Indochina. The Viet Minh’s march against Luang Prabang and threat against Thailand’s northern borders had caused some jitters among Malayan policymakers. British officials in Malaya and Singapore concurred with Nixon that the security of Southeast Asia depended on the situation in Indochina.19 British officials, while clearly worried about the situation in Indochina, did not allow the deteriorating situation to draw their attention away from their more immediate task of bringing the Emergency in Malaya to an end. As years of war, by 1951 the French began to feel exhausted and the Viet Minh were gaining strength and winning many victories. The communist victory in China in 1949 not only gave the Viet Minh a morale boost but, most importantly, material supplies and training, which proved more than useful against the French. By the end of 1953, while French military commanders in Indochina were still planning major offensives against the Viet Minh, many national leaders began to feel the pinch of war, and questioned the wisdom of continuing it. General Henri Navarre, commander of French forces in Indochina, planned for a showdown with the Viet Minh in the border village of Dien Bien Phu. The plan was to lure the Viet Minh to fight in that area and by virtue of more arms on the French side, defeat them. The battle began in March 1954 and lasted until May 8, 1954, when French forces were overrun by the Viet Minh. The Viet Minh victory at Dien Bien Phu had a profound impact on the development of the Cold War in Southeast Asia, especially in affecting direct

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U.S. intervention in the region to contain communist advancement. In Malaya, however, the response was somewhat paradoxical. The British government and the Malayan leaders feared that the victory of the communist-led Viet Minh would have a catastrophic effect on the prosecution of the war against the CPM. It was feared that the Viet Minh victory would help to boost the morale and fighting spirit of the CPM. The thought of a “domino” effect really became a worrying factor. However, it did not happen. In fact, the victory at Dien Bien Phu did not elicit a notable enthusiastic response from the CPM. So, instead of being a morale booster, the event passed without any significant effect on the CPM’s fortunes. By 1954, the CPM’s armed insurgency had lost much of its earlier initiatives. From a force that had initially pushed the British Commonwealth forces into a defensive position, the CPM, after six years of fighting, had reached a plateau in its activities, where it no longer possessed the initiative in battle. After six years of continual fighting against the British and their allies, the CPM’s human resources had been greatly depleted through battle casualties, desertions, and surrenders. When news of the victory of the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu reached Malaya, the CPM was a party under siege. According to Chin Peng, CPM secretary general, the party was preoccupied with the question of responding to the changing political scenario in Malaya, including the possibility of negotiating a peace to end the Emergency as well as the likelihood of Malaya seriously considering holding general elections for a federal legislative council.20 Abdullah CD, a Malay communist leader, related how on the day that the Geneva Accord was signed, he was still leading his men on their retreat to the southern Thai border, and some of his men were bombed by the British.21 They were too preoccupied by their own survival to take note of the latest development in Indochina, let alone reaping any benefits from the Viet Minh victory at Dien Bien Phu. In a broader sense, the defeat of the French forces at Dien Bien Phu and the Geneva Conference that ensued, prompted new measures by the anticommunist nations to create a form of anticommunist military bloc in Southeast Asia. The idea was pushed and pursued by the United States and Britain, culminating in the establishment of the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO). The creation of SEATO on September 8, 1954, further dragged Vietnam into the politics of the Cold War. The organization was formed through the initiative of both the United States and Britain with the aim of containing communist aggression in Southeast Asia, and Vietnam in particular. Vietnam was considered to be the frontline of the struggle against communist expansion. Despite the importance of the organization, Malaya was not part of SEATO as it was still under British rule. In 1955, the United States and Britain, the

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leaders of SEATO, were hoping to expand its membership to include Malaya when it achieved independence. However, when Malaya finally achieved independence in 1957, its leaders chose not to join SEATO. They preferred to stick with the Anglo–Malayan Defence Agreement, which was signed with Britain in October 1957 after achieving independence. Through the agreement, Malaya was linked to SEATO without actually joining the military alliance.22 According to Malayan Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman, As you know, we are not in SEATO. We are tied up with Britain under the Defence Agreement but whether that has indirectly tied us up to SEATO is a question that would be difficult for me to answer. All I can say is that we are not in SEATO. In this respect, if SEATO countries are involved in any war, we are not committed to the war, but on the other hand, if Britain entered the war and one of the countries which we are committed to defend, like Singapore, a British territory or Borneo, is attacked, then we are treaty bound to fight. Perhaps you might say, we are indirectly connected with SEATO, but I can say quite openly here and assure the House that we are not in SEATO.23 The decision not to join SEATO appeared inconsistent with Malaya’s anticommunist stance. However, other issues helped to shape Malaya’s decision not to join. The first was the Malayan leaders’ apprehensions about the hostile attitude of both India and Indonesia toward SEATO. This was stated by Tunku Abdul Rahman in 1959 as being the main reason why Malaya did not join the Manila Pact that gave birth to SEATO. Both India and Indonesia were committed to the idea of non-alignment, and thus could not accept SEATO, which was a military alliance. Malaya was keen to promote closer ties with both countries and would try to minimize involvement in something that was opposed by both. Second, Malaya’s decision not to join SEATO was probably also influenced by domestic politics: Criticism from within the ruling United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and other Malay parties, such as the Pan Malayan Islamic Party, had influenced the Malayan leaders to keep Malaya out.24

Independence and the Renewed Indochina War The independence of Malaya in 1957 marked the beginning of official diplomatic relations between Vietnam and Malaysia. The Republic of Vietnam (RVN) extended recognition to Malaya in the same year, thus beginning a new phase of bilateral relations that provided more direct contact, but at the same time was governed very much by the escalation of the Vietnam War. However,

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the communist-led Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) remained skeptical, if not hostile, toward Malaya. In this section, I attempt to trace the course of the bilateral relationship in the midst of the Vietnam War, as well as in the wider context of the Cold War, and how Malaya responded to the escalating war situation in Vietnam. Increased hostilities by the DRV against South Vietnam through infiltrators and open conflict contravened the provisions of the Geneva Agreement that brought about the end of the war in Indochina in 1954. Ironically, the DRV was a signatory while South Vietnam was not. The hostilities that continued for the next two decades paved the way for U.S. intervention in South Vietnam through provisions in the Protocol of the SEATO Agreement of September 1954, whose network extended the defense perimeter to include the Indochinese states.25 U.S. intervention was justified based on the rationale of the domino theory put forward by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles of the Eisenhower administration. The theory stated that the rest of Southeast Asia would fall to communism like dominoes once South Vietnam was overrun by the Hanoi forces. As Hanoi was regarded as the agent of international communism in Southeast Asia, it was vital for the United States to defend South Vietnam. This theory was not without foundation. First, in the late 1940s and 1950s, countries in Southeast Asia were battling communist insurgencies, such as the CPM in Malaya and the Hukbalahap in the Philippines. Second, by defending South Vietnam against communist conquest, the political separation of Vietnam into two ideologically different states would deny the DRV a strong communist Vietnam. Third, U.S. intervention in Vietnam was intended to “buy time” for non-communist Southeast Asia to develop national and regional resilience against internal and external communist threats.26 The validity of this theory was stressed by President John F. Kennedy who believed that if South Vietnam fell, the rest of Southeast Asia would succumb to communism. If South Vietnam fell, he argued, it would improve China’s position for a guerrilla assault on Malaya, and would also give the impression that China and communism were the wave of the future in Southeast Asia.27 As U.S. military and economic assistance began to flood into South Vietnam, Malaya, a newly independent nation, was inevitably drawn into this notso cold war in Vietnam—a result of its anticommunist and pro-Western stand. Malaya’s stand can best be understood as being aimed at preserving its newly won independence. The Malayan Emergency was in many ways similar to the situation in South Vietnam, but minus massive U.S. involvement. It is no surprise that South Vietnam was the first state ever visited by Tunku Abdul Rahman as prime minister of Malaya at the invitation of President Ngo Dinh Diem.

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This invitation was clearly a part of Diem’s unceasing efforts in South Vietnam’s anticommunist campaign, which included building friendship with ideological allies. The Tunku’s visit to Saigon in 1958 was reciprocated by President Ngo Dinh Diem’s visits to Malaya on January 28–31, 1958, and in October 1961. There was no doubt that there was great friendship and mutual admiration between the two leaders.28 On numerous occasions, leaders of the two countries expressed their support for each other in their respective struggles against the communists. They gave each other encouragement as both governments believed that they were “standing in the front line of the defense of the “free world.”29 But what was more important was the increased role played by Malaya in supporting South Vietnam in its anticommunist efforts. Malaya (and, later, Malaysia) helped train Republic of Vietnam military and police personnel, supplied surplus weapons to South Vietnam, and later served as a refit and recreation center for U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. As early as 1959, Malaya gave assistance to Vietnam by providing jungle warfare and police training. In early 1961, Saigon received three shipments of police equipment from Malaya, including 55,475 shotguns, 346 signal pistols, 450 Browning automatic pistols, 836 carbines, 45,707 rifles, more than 10,000 other small arms, 346 armored vehicles, 241 scout cars, and 206 armored weapon carriers.30 Tunku Abdul Rahman said in 1965, “[M]y country was the first to help Vietnam by sending arms and other materials because we believe that Viet Nam has a right to live its own life.”31 These shipments comprised leftovers from the 12-year Emergency that ended in July 1960. However, the entire weapons-supply operation was conducted in secrecy as it was in violation of Article 17 of the Geneva Agreement32; moreover, the Malayan government was concerned about opposition parties’ reaction to the venture.33 Three major factors behind Malaya’s (and later Malaysia’s) support for South Vietnam were fear of the Chinese threat, anticommunist position, and sympathy for South Vietnam’s ordeal.34 The Chinese threat35 has been a principal consideration in Malaysian foreign policy in terms of relations with other Southeast Asian countries. Although geographically distant, Malaya, under Tunku Abdul Rahman’s administration, saw the communist threat in Southeast Asia and Asia as “within the framework of this threat” from China.36 Thus, it was not surprising when Tunku declared that the DRV’s aggression was backed by the People’s Republic of China.37 The fact that 35 percent of Malayans were ethnic Chinese also led to the Malayan leaders’ apprehensions about China. Hence, when the DRV launched its attack against South Vietnam, the Malayan leadership inevitably viewed it as part of China’s expansion program. Malaya’s bitter experience of twelve years of fighting against communist insurgents was strongly imprinted in the minds of Malayan foreign policymak-

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ers. This perception was closely linked to their fears of domino theory–type communist expansion. Kuala Lumpur also worried about the effect of the communist victory in Vietnam on the local CPM, which was still conducting an armed struggle against the Malayan government. A victory by the DRV in Vietnam would boost their morale, if not enhance support for the CPM, thus once again posing a serious threat to national security. The effect of a communist success in Indochina was felt in Malaya as early as 1953 at the height of the Emergency when Viet Minh success in Vietnam against the French resulted in a decline in the number of communist surrenders in Malaya. How far the sympathy factor played a part in influencing Malaya’s support for South Vietnam is debatable. Khaw suggested that this was based on Malaysia’s common experience of anticommunist bitterness, and the suffering of the Vietnamese people.38 It would be more logical to accept the first of the two considerations, as a nation’s foreign policy is necessarily influenced more by its own national interest and security concerns than by sentimental factors. Thus, when Malaya assisted the Saigon regime it was done with the sole purpose of ensuring the existence of a stronger South Vietnam against the communist DRV threat, and to check the communist advance indirectly. In doing so it also demonstrated Malaya’s anticommunist and pro-Western inclinations. Needless to say, Saigon was pleased with Malaya’s support for its anticommunist insurgency warfare in South Vietnam. On the other hand, the DRV was critical of Malaya’s action. It was particularly annoyed because Malaya’s assistance was contrary to Article 17(a) of the Geneva Agreement, and even threatened to bring the case to the attention of the International Court of Justice.39 Malayan support to South Vietnam also came in the form of sharing anticommunist strategic experiences, including setting up the resettlement scheme. Earlier, during the French phase of the Indochina War, a “protected villages” program was introduced in 1953.40 The concept was modeled after the Briggs plan in the Malayan Emergency aimed at protecting the rural inhabitants from the communist terrorists and, at the same time, denying the communists support and information from the villagers.41 This was followed by the “agrovilles” program, created by Ngo Dinh Diem’s regime in 1959. A “strategic hamlet” program was introduced by the Kennedy administration, which believed that the Malayan model would be useful in alienating support for the communists. While the program in Malaya involved the resettlement of villagers into new villages, the strategic hamlets program in Vietnam aimed at defending existing villages and hamlets, and providing them with necessary infrastructure.42 Unlike the resettlement program in Malaya under the Briggs plan,43 which involved a larger area and stronger fortified defense of the area, the small scattered units of strategic hamlets were too vulnerable to external attacks, thus limiting the effectiveness of the system.

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The program was implemented with great enthusiasm by Diem’s administration44 and, as in Malaya, it achieved some positive results in the early stages by creating severe problems for the People’s Liberation Armed Forces of the National Liberation Front (Viet Cong).45 By the end of September 1962, a total of 11,316 hamlets were planned, and 3,225 were completed, containing over four million people, a third of the total population. A further 2,500 hamlets were completed by May 1963.46 Even after Diem’s death, the program was carried on by the succeeding regime under General Duong Van Minh,47 the leader who overthrew President Diem. General Minh stressed that much could be learned by drawing on the impressive experience of Malaya’s fortified villages.48 However, many strategic hamlets were destroyed or overrun by the Viet Cong, and the program was beset by corruption and mismanagement. By the mid-1960s, the program was virtually a failure. In 1965, the initiative was renamed the New Life Hamlet Program by Prime Minister Nguyen Khan in 1965, and in 1966, recast as the Revolutionary Program by Prime Minister Nguyen Cao Ky.49 The later program was implemented in 980 out of a total of 15,000 existing hamlets.50 Again, it was a failure. Malayan support for the Diem regime continued even after the Vietnamese regime had lost much of its nationalist appeal with the people after massive foreign military intervention. President Ngo Dinh Diem was assassinated on November 2, 1963, in the midst of a coup d’etat staged by discontented officers led by General Duong Van Minh. The coup resulted in the establishment of a provisional government supported by a military junta. The government was quick to declare its anticommunist stand; this was sufficient for South Vietnam to win support from the Western and pro-Western countries including the newly established Malaysia.51 Thus, it would appear that Malaya’s (and, later, Malaysia’s) support for South Vietnam was based on one fundamental consideration—that it remained firm in its fight against the communists. As long as it did so, Malaysia seemed to be willing to accept the several regimes in the aftermath of the fall of Diem. Malaya’s anticommunist stand continued to dominate later policies, including the decision to expand the federation to include Singapore and the British Borneo states of Sarawak and North Borneo. Ghazali Shafie, then foreign minister, has stated that the regional situation in Southeast Asia changed dramatically toward the end of April 1961 with the Pathet Lao quite close to capturing the capital, Luang Prabang. Thus, there was an urgent need to push forward the plan of a larger federation with the prime minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman. According to Ghazali, The Malayan Government was extremely uneasy with the new development and it became clear that Laos under the control of

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Pathet Lao, with the help of the Soviet Union and Communist China, would render the Geneva Agreement useless. It was all the more reason that the idea of a closer arrangement with the Borneo territories, Singapore and the states of the Federation of Malaya should be expedited. This gave me the opportunity to get the Tunku to hasten what was later became known as the Malaysia Plan . . .52 The emphasis on the link between expediting the formation of the federation and events in Indochina is clear. The event in Indochina acted as a catalyst for the statement of the Malayan prime minister on May 27, 1961, almost a month later.53 The fact that these developments seem to have overridden other considerations supports the notion that events in Indochina had a profound effect on the manner in which policies were formulated in Malaya, at least in the areas of defense and foreign relations. Yet, such a notion has to be read in the context of Malaya’s experience in the larger picture of the Cold War in Asia when it endured twelve years of communist-led armed insurgency. Conclusion Throughout the immediate postwar years until it achieved independence in 1957, much of Malaya was preoccupied with the question of putting down an armed insurrection launched by the Communist Party of Malaya. Its twelveyear struggle against communism dominated policymaking prior to independence and after. It was within this Cold War framework that the war in Indochina was perceived by Malayan policymakers. In many ways the war in Indochina helped to reinforce the Malayan government’s anticommunist stance both before and after independence. The numerous instances of deteriorating security situations in Indochina evoked many concerned reactions from the British government, which was prosecuting a war against the communist insurgency in Malaya. Events in Indochina, which further escalated into war in the early 1960s with U.S. involvement, continued to exact reactions from postindependent Malayan leaders who were still apprehensive about the communist threat at the regional level. At the domestic level, however, other considerations had caused the country’s staunch anticommunist stand to become more pragmatic in foreign relations issues. One such domestic factor was the end of the Emergency in Malaya in 1960 and the lessening of the perceived communist threat to its national security. Notes 1. For an edited work on the early development of the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM), including documents, see Cheah Boon Kheng, From PKI to the Comintern, 1924–1941: The Apprenticeship of the Malayan Communist Party (Ithaca, NY: Cor-

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nell University Southeast Asian Program, 1992). For other studies on the CPM, see Gene Z. Hanrahan, The Communist Struggle in Malaya (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1971), and Anthony Short, The Communist Insurrection in Malaya, 1948–1960 (London: Frederick Muller Ltd., 1975). 2. See William J. Duiker, Ho Chi Minh (New York: Hyperion, 2000), 171, and Ton That Thien, Ho Chi Minh and the Comintern: Was Ho Chi Minh a Nationalist? (Singapore: Information Resource Centre, 1990), 30. 3. See Yoji Akashi, “Lai Teck: Secretary-General of the Malayan Communist Party, 1939–1947,” Journal of the South Seas Society 49 (1994), 57–103; Gene Z. Hanrahan, The Communist Struggle in Malaya, 55; and C.C. Too, Notes on History of the Communist Party of Malaya (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Library, 1990), 31. 4. Yap Hong Guan, “Perak under the Japanese, 1942–1945” (B.A. honors thesis, University of Malaya, 1957), 26, as cited in Cheah Boon Kheng, Red Star over Malaya (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1983), 59. 5. See Cheah Boon Kheng, ibid. 6. For a study on the communist involvement in Malaysian labor unions, see Cheah Boon Kheng, The Masked Comrade: A Study of the Communist United Front in Malaysia, 1945–1948 (Singapore: Times Book International, 1979). 7. C.C. Too, Notes on the History of the Communist Party of Malaya, 67–68. 8. For a detailed study on the Malayan Union, see Mohamed Noordin Sopiee, From Malayan Union to Singapore Separation (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1976); and Albert Lau, The Malayan Union Controversy (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1990). 9. For studies on the Malayan Emergency, see Gene Z. Hanrahan, The Communist Struggle in Malaya (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1971); and Anthony Short, The Communist Insurrection in Malaya, 1948–1960 (London: Frederick Muller Ltd., 1975). For local perspectives, see Khoo Kay Kim and Adnan Hj. Nawang, eds., Darurat, 1948–1960 (Kuala Lumpur: Muzium Angkatan Tentera, 1984); Aloysius Chin, The Communist Party of Malaya: The Inside Story (Kuala Lumpur: Vinpress, 1994); and Ho Hui Ling, Darurat, 1948–1960: Keadaan Sosial di Tanah Melayu (Kuala Lumpur: Penerbit Universiti Malaya, 2004). 10. In his memoir, the CPM Secretary General, Chin Peng, claimed that the killing of Gurney was a fluke (freak) event that the CPM had not planned. The incident, however, marked the low point in the morale of the government during the Emergency. See Chin Peng, My Side of History (Singapore: Media Master, 2003), 287–94. See also C.C. Chin and Karl Hack, eds., Dialogues with Chin Peng: New Light on the Malayan Communist Party (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2004), 155–58. 11. Aloysius Chin, The Communist Party of Malaya: The Inside Story (Kuala Lumpur: Vinpress, 1994), 42–43. The withdrawal was not fully completed until 1958. 12. Malay Mail, April 25, 1953. 13. Telegram from Sir Gerald Templer to Secretary of State for the Colonies, June 18, 1953, Colonial Office, South East Asia Department, Original Correspondence, CO1022/49. 14. Malay Mail, March 30, 1953. 15. Malay Mail, May 18, 1953. 16. “Analysis of Colonial Office Submitted to Cabinet Office,” June 12, 1953, Colonial Office, South East Asia Department, Original Correspondence, CO1022/200.

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17. Malay Mail, September 12, 1953. 18. Malay Mail, October 10, 1953. 19. Straits Times, November 1, 1953, and Malay Mail, November 4, 1953. 20. Chin Peng, My Side of History, 352–60. 21. Abdullah CD, Perang Anti-British dan Perdamaian (Hong Kong: Nan Dao Publisher, 1998), 153–54. 22. Leszek Buszynski, SEATO: The Failure of an Alliance Strategy (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1983), 70. 23. “Statement by Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman to Malayan Legislative Council,” Legislative Council Debates, 4th Session, December 1958, col. 6029, cited in Peter Boyce, Malaysia and Singapore in International Diplomacy (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1968), 42. 24. T.H. Silcock, “The Development of a Malayan Foreign Policy,” Australian Outlook 17, no. 1 (April 1963). 25. See “Protocol to the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, 8 September 1954,” Doc. 394 in Gareth Porter, ed., Vietnam: The Definite Documentation of Human Decisions (New York: Earl M. Coleman Enterprises Inc., 1979), 681. 26. This line of argument has also been called the “Rostow thesis.” See W.W. Rostow, The Diffusion of Power: An Essay in Recent History (New York: Macmillan, 1972), 269–71. 27. The Times, September 10, 1963. 28. Tunku Abdul Rahman, Looking Back (Kuala Lumpur: Pustaka Antara, 1977), 140. 29. Tunku stated this while replying to the toast in his honour during his visit to Saigon in 1958, Sunday Mail, September 27, 1970. 30. Straits Times, January 2, 1962. 31. The Saigon Post, May 4, 1965. 32. Article 17(a) of the Geneva Agreement stated: “With effect from the date of entry into force of the present agreements, the introduction into Vietnam of any reinforcements in the form of all types of arms, munitions and other war material such as combat aircraft, naval craft, pieces of ordinance, jet engines and jet weapons and armoured vehicles, is prohibited.” “The Geneva Accord, July 20, 1954,” Doc. 378 in Gareth Porter, ed., Vietnam: The Definite Documentation of Human Decisions, vol. 1 (New York: Earl M. Coleman Enterprises Inc., 1979), 647. 33. Sunday Mail, September 27, 1970. 34. Khaw Guat Hoon, “Malaysian Policies in Southeast Asia 1957–1970, The Search for Security” (PhD diss., Universite de Geneve, 1976), 125–33. 35. For a detailed study on the Chinese threat, see Michael Yahuda, The Chinese Threat (Kuala Lumpur: Institute of Strategic and International Studies, 1986). 36. Foreign Affairs Malaysia, 1, no. 2, 1966, 46. 37. Ibid. 38. Khaw Guat Hoon, “Malaysian Policies in Southeast Asia 1957–1970,” 132. 39. Hsinbua News Agency, 22 January 1961, as quoted in Khaw Guat Hoon, “Malaysian Policies in Southeast Asia 1957–1970,” 137. 40. The Protected Village Program, first introduced in the Red River Delta in early 1953, was modeled after the Briggs Plan in Malaya. The first protected village was at Dong Quan, fifty-five miles south of Hanoi. See Malay Mail, April 16, 1951. 41. The Times, January 21, 1963.

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42. For a detailed study on strategic hamlets, see Milton E. Osborne, Strategic Hamlets in South Viet-Nam: A Study and Comparison, data paper no. 55, Southeast Asian Program, Department of Asian Studies (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1965). See also Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency: The Lessons of Malaya and Vietnam, Studies in International Security 10 (New York: Praeger, 1966), 121–40. 43. The Briggs Plan was the successful resettlement program of Chinese squatters in Malaya during the Emergency (1948–1960), named after its initiator General Harold Briggs, then director of operations. The program resulted in the successful denial of support to the communists. 44. The Times, January 21, 1963. 45. The PLAF was the formal name of the armed forces of the revolutionary movement in the Republic of Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Commonly known as the Viet Cong, it came into existence at a secret military conference held near Saigon in February 1961. See William J. Duiker, Historical Dictionary of Vietnam (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1989), 161. 46. W.W. Rostow, The Diffusion of Power, 281. 47. General Duong Van Minh, nicknamed “big Minh,” was a general in the RVN, and also the leading force behind the coup d’etat that overthrew President Ngo Dinh Diem’s regime in November 1963. He became the last president of the RVN a few days before surrendering the country to the communists on April 30, 1975. 48. General Duong Van Minh in an interview with the French journalist Jean Lacouture. See Jean Lacouture, Vietnam: Between Two Truces, Konrad Kellen & Joel Carmichael, trans. (London: Secker and Warburg, 1966), 128. 49. The Revolutionary Development Program differed from its predecessors in that it did not attempt to relocate villages. See Harvey H. Smith, et al., South Vietnam Area Handbook (Washington, DC: American University, 1967), 232. 50. Ibid. 51. On September 16, 1963, the Federation of Malaysia was formed joining Malaya with Singapore, North Borneo (Sabah), and Sarawak. Two years later, Singapore left the Federation. 52. Ghazali Shafie, Memoir on the Formation of Malaysia (Bangi: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 1998), 16. 53. In Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew emphasized a similar threat from the communists in Singapore as the principal factor that encouraged him to push for the merger idea with the British and the Malayan leaders. Lee told Philip Moore, the deputy commissioner, that Singapore was “at a critical juncture and if the British allowed the Communists to believe there could be a pro-Communist Singapore, they would be inviting trouble for Singapore and Malaya.” See Lee Kuan Yew, The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (Singapore: Singapore Press Holdings, 1998), 360.

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11. Phibun, the Cold War, and Thailand’s Foreign Policy Revolution of 1950 Daniel Fineman

The foreign policy revolution that Thai Prime Minister Phibun Songkhram engineered in 1950 marks one of the defining moments in the country’s modern history. For most of the previous seventy-five years, Thailand had protected its independence and interests by maintaining proper relations with all the great powers, and aligning itself closely with none. Phibun himself followed the traditional approach to foreign relations in the first three years after a military coup placed him in power in 1947. His 1950 decision to firmly align the country with the United States against the Soviet Union, China, and the Viet Minh overturned this time-tested foreign policy dictum, and for the first time (excluding the period of Japanese occupation) set Thailand in the camp of a single global power. Phibun’s policy revolution reshaped domestic politics as much as they transformed the country’s foreign relations. Phibun aligned himself with the United States more to solidify his shaky position with the military junta than out of a desire to protect the country from communist China. By siding with the United States, Phibun won for the military large commitments of weapons aid, and earned for himself the invaluable position as foreign aid rainmaker for the army. Phibun’s 1950 policy revolution turned on two decisions—the recognition of the French-installed government of Emperor Bao Dai of Vietnam, and the dispatch of troops to Korea in support of the United States. Neither action mattered substantively to the outcome of the struggles in Korea or Vietnam, but as emblematic gestures of the country’s alignment with the United States, they shaped foreign policy and domestic politics for decades. Internationally, Phibun’s policy revolution made Thailand one of Washington’s closest and most

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important Asian allies. Domestically, it set Thailand on the path to anticommunist military dictatorship.

Bao Dai Bao Dai emerged as an issue for Phibun in mid-1949. The Bao Dai government—if it could accurately be called a government—had existed just a few months. In early 1947, the French, searching for a conservative Vietnamese leader who could attract popular support from Ho Chi Minh, began negotiations with former emperor Bao Dai to take over a new, nominally independent Vietnamese government. Bao Dai, a puppet of the French in the 1930s, a Japanese collaborator during the war, and an ally of the Viet Minh in the immediate postwar years, reached an accord with the French in March 1949, but the government he established offered little hope of achieving French aims. Despite lengthy negotiations, the French granted Bao Dai none of the powers he needed to present himself to the people as a nationalist leader, and he had no plan of action to win the war with the Viet Minh. Personally, Bao Dai inspired little faith among Vietnamese or Westerners. Dissolute, lazy, and lacking charisma, Bao Dai enjoyed a “loyal following,” a British diplomat quipped, probably consisting only of “some half-dozen Hong Kong concubines.”1 As long as France stood alone behind Bao Dai, Phibun could ignore the feeble experiment, but, as the Americans and British slowly increased their backing for the playboy emperor, pressure on the Thais to act intensified. Although most of the State Department’s Asianists at first stoutly opposed associating American prestige with such a weak leader, the more influential Europeanists pushed for the United States to support its French ally’s effort, and, by the second half of the year, increased fears of a Viet Minh takeover of Indochina led even the Asianists to promote Bao Dai. In June 1949, the State Department released a statement pronouncing the March agreement “gratifying.” By December, Secretary of State Dean Acheson and other high-ranking officials favored formally recognizing the Bao Dai government when the French legislature finally ratified the March accord.2 From early on, this shift in American opinion translated to pressure on the Thais. In anticipation of the June State Department statement praising Bao Dai, the State Department’s Southeast Asia Division head, Kenneth Landon, urged Thailand’s ambassador, Prince Wan Waithayakorn, on June 21 to advise his government to issue its own declaration of support for the new regime.3 When Prince Wiwatthanachai Chaiyan, the minister of finance, visited Washington in September, Landon again exhorted the Thais to support the new government. “I underlined,” Landon said of his conversation with Wiwatthanachai, “the importance of the success of

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Bao Dai to Thailand and reminded the Prince again of the unfortunate results which might occur if Ho Chi Minh should achieve control of Indochina.”4 The Thais, though, felt no sympathy for Bao Dai. They recognized his lack of popular appeal and did not want to see him perpetuate colonialism in Indochina. A July memorandum prepared by the Foreign Ministry’s American adviser, Kenneth Patton, captured neatly the contempt the ministry held for the Bao Dai experiment.5 The former emperor, Patton commented, was a puppet doomed to failure, and Thailand had no reason to support him. “There is no positive action,” Patton wrote, “which Thailand can take to support the Bao Dai regime, the failure or success of which will not, in the slightest degree, depend upon the attitude of this Kingdom.” More than just unwise, Patton argued, support for Bao Dai was immoral. “Any sign of approval of the B[ao]. D[ai]. government,” he explained, “would be a deviation from the principle of the right of self-determination.” Reflecting the mood of caution at the ministry, Patton contended that Thai policy should aim no higher than the small country itself could reach. The government should base its foreign policy, he recommended, “on the realization that this country cannot make any effective contribution, military, financial, or otherwise towards the defeat of the Chinese communists or to the maintenance of the Bao Dai regime.”6 Phibun and the Foreign Ministry seem to have agreed with Patton’s recommendations, and the Thais refused to declare their support for Bao Dai. When the State Department director of Far Eastern affairs, W. Walton Butterworth, lectured Prince Wiwatthanachai on Ho’s aggressive plans during the prince’s trip to Washington, Wiwatthanachai tartly replied, “Ho Chi Minh is your problem not ours.”7 While they rejected the Bao Dai experiment on its own merits, however, the Thais saw a clear linkage between Vietnam and an issue of the greatest importance to Phibun—U.S. military aid. Although the military junta, known as the Coup Group, had placed Phibun at the head of government, he had only shaky support from the armed forces. The generals had chosen him as prime minister for the prestige he enjoyed as the military’s leader in the 1930s and as de facto dictator during the war, but Phibun was not a member of the Coup Group. Composed primarily of army officers, the Coup Group itself faced fierce opposition from the navy, and within the army several factions competed for supremacy. Due to the disunity of the military, civilians in 1950 retained considerable influence within and outside the government. The opposition Democrat Party held the largest number of seats in parliament, antimilitary newspapers thrived, and the Foreign Ministry held sway over foreign policy. Military aid offered Phibun an important tool in his campaign to strengthen his position amid this cauldron of competing interests. A large American assistance package would win him the Coup Group’s gratitude, unify the military

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under his personal banner and strengthen the generals’ efforts to marginalize the pesky civilian opposition. Phibun first requested military assistance in late 1948, but progress came only after Washington began seeking diplomatic support for Bao Dai. In the second half of 1949, U.S. diplomacy convinced the Thais that arms aid and recognition were linked. Prince Wiwatthanachai had made his September trip to Washington to seek American support for a World Bank loan. Butterworth’s exploitation of the occasion to lecture the prince on Bao Dai communicated clearly to the Thais that the United States expected diplomatic performance in return for any material assistance. After Congress passed an omnibus assistance act the last week of September, Ambassador Wan approached Assistant Secretary of State Rusk to ask for a share of the money. Rusk replied that Thailand would have to enter a “common defense arrangement” and that he would need to talk to Wan about Thai foreign policy in general. Wan explained to Deputy Foreign Minister Phot Sarasin that, as he understood the intent of the aid bill, “the American government probably wants to receive a definite confirmation regarding the policy of the Thai government in defending against communist aggression” in return for any military assistance.8 More important, the Americans would likely also ask about Thailand’s stance on the matter of recognition of the People’s Republic of China and “whether or not the Thai government will also support [the Bao Dai government] and . . . exchange diplomatic representatives with Vietnam.”9 U.S. Ambassador to Thailand Edwin Stanton, skeptical of Bao Dai’s prospects from the beginning, seems to have refrained from joining the State Department’s armtwisting of the Thais, and, in December, the department instructed Stanton to bring up the subject only at his own discretion. No evidence exists, moreover, that the Americans ever explicitly linked the aid and Bao Dai issues when speaking with the Thais. As the United States committed itself more firmly to the new Vietnamese government, however, the Thais’ interest in receiving aid without providing anything in return increasingly frustrated American officials. In January 1950, Acheson telegraphed Stanton that Thai reluctance to recognize Bao Dai’s government “raises doubts in the Dep[artmen]t of the desirability of strengthening the Thai against Commie aggression.”10 U.S. lobbying on behalf of Bao Dai gave the Thais pause over whether arms aid came with too high a political price tag. As far back as May, disagreements had arisen within the government over the Foreign Ministry’s apparent lack of zeal in seeking assistance from the United States. Some cabinet ministers accused Prince Wan of dragging his feet on the matter, and Phot had to angrily defend his ambassador to Phibun.11 Then, when the United States began associating military assistance with a bolder Thai foreign policy in the fall, Thai

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doubts multiplied. When describing to Phibun in October Wan’s encounter with Rusk, Phot noted with some alarm that the United States expected not merely stricter control of domestic communists, but also a more assertive anticommunism abroad, including support for Bao Dai’s puppet regime. The implicit American demands, Phot claimed, struck at “important policy principles.” He recommended that the cabinet give them urgent consideration.12 For the time, Phot and the Foreign Ministry got their way. In the second week of November, Phibun called a cabinet meeting to consider, in light of the possibility that strings would be attached to any U.S. aid program, the proper stance toward the China and Bao Dai questions. In anticipation of the meeting, Phot and the ministry prepared a memorandum presenting their recommendations. Phot advised Phibun in this paper to adopt a “wait and see” attitude toward China. Regarding the Bao Dai government, Phot urged even more strongly that Phibun withhold any recognition or support. Bao Dai, Phot believed, commanded negligible popular backing, and eventual French withdrawal from Indochina was inevitable. Were the Thais to rush into recognizing Bao Dai’s doomed regime, they would “make an enemy of a neighbor” once Ho assumed control of Vietnam.13 Phibun agreed, and, on November 16, the cabinet accepted Phot’s recommendations.14 Phibun maintained his public silence on Bao Dai, and, a month later, Wan informed the State Department of the impossibility of any recognition in the immediate future.15 The heavyhanded American pressure seems even to have dampened the enthusiasm of the proudly nationalistic Phibun for American military assistance. In early December, he instructed Phot to take his time in submitting the weapons request lists. “We should not rush” in asking for the arms, Phibun explained. “We should behave with some dignity.”16 By the new year, however, events were leading Phibun to reconsider his rebuff of the Americans on Bao Dai—and the cautious policies of the past three years. Before then, foreign concerns and his political weakness had prevented Phibun from implementing significant policy changes. But 1950 saw the fog of international uncertainties that had clouded his path disappear, and domestic political triumphs opened the way for him to pursue new foreign policy initiatives. Not all of these developments pleased Phibun, but each contributed to his decision to align Thailand with the United States and the new French-controlled regime. Within a remarkably short span of time, he reversed course completely on Bao Dai and altered the basic thrust of his foreign policy. On the American side, renewed movement toward a military assistance package for Thailand gave Phibun reason to hope that a policy shift would be rewarded. On December 10, Stanton sent the State Department a $15 million request drafted by the Thais and the American military attachés.17 Three weeks

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later, acceptance by President Truman and the National Security Council (NSC) of the State Department’s version of the policy paper NSC 48/2 guaranteed that Southeast Asia would receive a large portion of the $75 million for the “general area of China.” By mid-January, the Defense Department was working in tandem with the State Department to develop country programs. Truman first approved $5 million for the Indonesian constabulary on January 9.18 Then, surprisingly, although the State Department recommended in December only $5 million for Thailand, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) proposed to Secretary of Defense Louis A. Johnson on January 20 that the Thais be granted $10 million. On February 1, Johnson forwarded the proposal to Acheson with his approval.19 The Thais were not privy to the details of the American decision-making process, but, on February 7, Landon informed Wan that the Thai aid “request is receiving consideration from high-ranking officials.” “They view the request in a positive light,” Wan telegraphed Phot, “because the Sec[retary] of State and Sec[retary] of Defense are well aware of Thailand’s needs.”20 Phibun, therefore, knew that matters were again reaching a critical point in Washington and that, once more, his own diplomacy could tip the balance in Thailand’s favor. A revised request list that he had Wan present the Americans in January provided clear evidence of his high hopes. The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff calculated the cost of the weapons cited at $660 million!21 While Phibun’s expectations of U.S. aid soared in January, any ambition he might have entertained of establishing proper relations with the Chinese communist regime, along with any reason to placate China’s new government, vanished. Although the British, fearful for their Hong Kong colony, formally recognized Mao’s government on January 6, Beijing maintained its resolutely anti-Western policy. Chinese authorities harassed American diplomats, and official and press sources issued a stream of denunciations of the United States and its allies. With the new year, Beijing extended its attacks to Thailand, and Phibun in particular. On January 26, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs formally protested Phibun’s treatment of ethnic Chinese in Thailand. Claiming that the police had jailed or deported in excess of a thousand Chinese and that “more than ten persons have been beaten or poisoned to death,” the ministry demanded that the Thai government cease its repression of Chinese and “bear full responsibility for such atrocities.” Two days later, the Shanghai newspaper Ta Kung Pao launched a more fearsome assault, aimed this time more forcefully at Phibun. The Chinese government broadcast the article over the radio. “Following the resurgence to power of the war criminal, Phibun Songkhram,” the editorial exclaimed, “the fascist government of Thailand has again only changed from an enemy satellite into an imperialist lackey. . . . However, in selling out the interests of the Thai race and people, in looking on

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New China with scorn, in humiliating Chinese nationals, and in depending upon American imperialism to oppose the people of Southeast Asia, these Thai fascists shall ultimately end up in being buried in the graves of their own digging.” Ominously, the newspaper warned that “the voice of the Fatherland shall further reach the ears of all overseas Chinese, telling them that they shall no longer be defenceless for their Fatherland is now behind them.”22 With Beijing thus implicitly threatening to incite local Chinese to overthrow him, Phibun could not even contemplate allowing a new Chinese embassy to open in Bangkok. Fortunately for him, by then the United States had similarly decided not to recognize Beijing. On January 14, the United States removed all its remaining diplomats from China, closing the door on recognition.23 Taking a pro-U.S. stance on Bao Dai and other questions, therefore, would now cost Phibun little in diplomatic terms. Any attempt to placate Beijing would likely prove futile, and, with the United States already shunning relations with China, he felt no pressure from the West to do so. As events in Bangkok, Beijing, and Washington thus at once created possibilities for and provided incentives to Phibun in early 1950, the Bao Dai soap opera also reached a climax. Despite their sympathy for French efforts, the United States and Britain withheld recognition of Bao Dai’s government throughout 1949 as they waited for the French parliament to ratify the March agreement formally establishing the new Vietnamese government. In mid-January 1950, however, Britain rushed a declaration of de facto recognition, and, on January 29, almost a full year after the signing of the accord, the French assembly ratified the March agreement. Five days later, Truman approved Acheson’s recommendation to recognize Bao Dai, and, on February 7, the United States publicly announced its recognition. China and the USSR, in the meantime, declared their acceptance of Ho Chi Minh as the legitimate leader of a united Vietnam.24 Phibun, therefore, confronted in February an issue of clearly demarcated East-West conflict. Any decision—or lack of decision—on his part would profoundly affect his and Thailand’s standing with the world powers. Phibun’s desire to nail down an American aid package settled the issue. Although most in the country knew that a U.S. military assistance program was probably already certain, Thais remained convinced that American arms aid and Thai diplomatic support for Bao Dai were intimately related. Rumors swept the Thai capital in February that the United States had proposed an aid program as an explicit quid pro quo for recognition of Bao Dai, and Thais inside and outside the government came to believe that, although the country was certain to receive some sort of aid, the size and speed of arms shipments depended on Phibun’s stance toward Bao Dai. The arrival of a delegation of American dignitaries determined the timing

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of Phibun’s decision on Bao Dai. On December 15, Acheson’s trusted adviser, Philip C. Jessup, left Washington for a three-month fact-finding tour of the Far East culminating in a conference of high-ranking State Department Asianists and regional ambassadors in Bangkok on February 13–15. Washington trumpeted the tour and the Bangkok conference as crucial elements in the development of a comprehensive plan to contain communism in Asia. In Thailand, the conference received headline coverage.25 Phibun decided to implement his foreign policy initiative as the conference met. Phibun prepared the way with a decision of importance—his public rejection of Beijing. The local press reported in early January that the cabinet remained divided over the question of whether to recognize the Chinese communists, and Phot announced soon afterward that the government was still awaiting the reaction of other Asian nations to the new regime, but Phibun declared outright to the United Press correspondent in the first week of February—several days before Jessup’s arrival—that Thailand “has no intention” of recognizing Mao’s government. Phibun added that he was even considering curtailing the activities of the Soviet embassy in Bangkok.26 Three days after his up interview, Phibun decided on Bao Dai. Although he had again rebuffed a Stanton appeal on February 8 to recognize Bao Dai and told a CBS reporter the same day that Thailand would establish relations with Vietnam only after the French-supported regime had attracted popular support, on February 9, Phibun told a reporter for the English-language Bangkok Post that he would ask the cabinet on February 13, the first day of the ambassadors’ conference, to approve the recognition of Bao Dai.27 Diplomats and some cabinet ministers expressed doubts that he had actually made the surprising comment, but Phibun confirmed to the Post the next day his intention to recognize the new regime.28 In two days, therefore, Phibun had discarded six months of Foreign Ministry recommendations and overturned recent cabinet directives he himself had supported. The statements commenced his most important policy initiative since his return to power. Phibun, however, still had several obstacles to overcome before he could fully implement the initiative. Opinion in Parliament, the press, and much of the government strongly opposed recognizing Bao Dai. Although the Democrat Party patriotically spared Phibun from a divisive parliamentary debate on the matter, Democrat leader Khuang Aphaiwong had made clear in a January press interview that he favored a more neutral international stance pending a Western commitment to defend Thailand.29 The conservative newspaper, Prachathipatai, publicly opposed recognition, and, after Phibun’s declaration of support for Bao Dai, Khuang privately urged him to reconsider. Khuang argued that any recognition of the pro-French Cambodian and Laotian govern-

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ments along with Bao Dai would preclude return of the provinces retroceded to Thailand’s neighbors after the war.30 Another Democrat leader opposed recognition publicly.31 Likewise, an unnamed cabinet member griped to the New York Times, “The day we see Western moral support and sympathetic interest towards independent Asian governments translated into action will be the day when we hazard our chances of national survival by recognizing Western-sponsored regimes, such as Vietnam, which the Communist world has pledged to destroy, along with all nations supporting them.”32 The strength and prevalence of such sentiments forced Phibun to tell Jessup on February 10 that the cabinet might reject recognition.33 The strongest protests against Phibun’s Bao Dai proposal came from the Foreign Ministry. Despite Phibun’s declaration of support for the French-backed regime, Phot—now foreign minister—continued to oppose recognition. Phot told the New York Times after Phibun’s announcement that he doubted Bao Dai could succeed and, when meeting Jessup, complained that, “[I]f they [the Thais] backed Bao Dai and he failed, the animosity of the people of the country [Vietnam] would be turned against the Siamese.”34 Phot’s subordinates agreed. On February 11, Konthi Suphamongkhon, chief of the Foreign Ministry’s Western Department, presented Phot with an eight-page memorandum Phot had ordered Konthi to draft. Konthi strongly opposed recognition. Bao Dai was unpopular, lacked real power, and enjoyed scant chance of success, Konthi contended. Recognition would help prolong French domination of Indochina and set back the cause of decolonization. No one particularly liked Bao Dai, Konthi noted, and even the Americans and British supported him only for lack of a better alternative. Although the great powers could take chances, Thailand could not afford to gamble away its friends in the region. “Thailand is a small Asian country and a close neighbor of Vietnam,” Konthi explained. “Thailand risks more than the United States or England, both of which are great powers.” The government should hold out for a Western commitment to defend Thailand before acting, Konthi believed. He recommended that Phibun recognize Bao Dai only after receiving “firmer assurances of the help the two countries [the United States and Britain] will give us.” Konthi concluded that Thailand should withhold recognition of any of the French-sponsored Indochinese governments but noted that, if a gesture of support for France was absolutely necessary, the government should recognize only the more credible royal governments in Laos and Cambodia.35 The chief of the ministry’s Eastern Department agreed with Konthi, and a meeting of high-ranking ministry officials approved the memorandum. Phot supported its conclusions to Phibun and the cabinet.36 The military, however, backed Phibun completely. No less than the press and the public, the military believed that the size and speed of an American as-

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sistance program depended on Phibun’s recognition of Bao Dai. Stanton denied publicly that any linkage existed, but the unbecoming rumor gained currency in the ranks after Phibun’s initial declaration of support for Bao Dai. Stanton reported to the State Department that “representatives [of the] Thai armed forces [are] convinced [that the] recognition issue [is] linked with aid to Thai[land].” “I have confidentially informed [the] Prime Minister some military aid [is] likely,” Stanton complained, “but [the] expectations [of] Thai Army chiefs [are] fantastic.”37 From the beginning, such hopes won military backing for Bao Dai. Two high-ranking police officers expressed their support in public.38 The disagreement between the civilian and military elements of government over Bao Dai in no way reflected differences in attitudes toward communism. Although leftists sympathized with the Viet Minh, and others, such as Konthi, doubted that Ho was a communist, the most prominent critics of Bao Dai in Thailand were staunch anticommunists. Indeed, the groups opposing recognition represented possibly the only ideologically committed anticommunists in the country. While Phibun and most in the military bore little more than a gutlevel dislike of communism, the elites of the Democrat Party and Foreign Ministry shared a solid economic and social interest in opposing any radical ideology. Aristocrats, royalty, and old wealth dominated the Foreign Ministry as well as the Democrat Party. Atypical, in fact, was the high-ranking diplomat who lacked a title. Phot, although not a career diplomat, enjoyed all the economic privileges of the model Thai foreign minister. Scion of one of Bangkok’s oldest and wealthiest assimilated Chinese families, he maintained substantial interests in real estate, farmland, and rice trading. Among all the losers in any communist takeover of Thailand, Phot and the other opponents of Bao Dai in the Foreign Ministry and Democrat Party would be the biggest. Not growing fat, like the Coup Group, off the excesses of government monopolies, these conservatives could maintain their economic position only by upholding the sanctity of private property. None of them expressed any sympathy for communism when criticizing Bao Dai. They protested recognition precisely because they feared provoking the communists without getting a corresponding commitment from the West to defend Thailand. With the opposition to Bao Dai so strong within the government and politically active public, Phibun secured cabinet approval of recognition only with great difficulty. The first cabinet meeting on the issue on February 13 ended in a deadlock. Although Phibun won majority support for his position, he fell far short of the unanimity he wanted. Suasion and arm-twisting won over most of the skeptics, but the civilian ministers holding the communications, industry,

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health, and justice portfolios defiantly joined Phot in opposing the measure.39 When Phibun ordered another meeting a week later, he intensified the pressure on the recalcitrant ministers. This time, he called together not only the cabinet but also the Central Peace Maintenance Committee and the National Defense Council.40 The cabinet, because of a constitutional provision banning active military officers from holding ministerial portfolios, remained largely in civilian hands as late as 1950, but Coup Group members dominated the internal security-oriented Peace Maintenance Committee and external defense-oriented National Defense Council. Arguing that the issue touched on national security and thus fell within the purview of these two military-controlled organizations, Phibun stacked the deck in favor of Bao Dai. Phot and his sympathizers, however, stood firm. The same civilian cabinet members again voted against recognition, and, once more, the tally came five votes short of the unanimity Phibun desired.41 Finally, after several more inconclusive combined sessions, he had to settle for an incomplete victory.42 On February 28, without having broken the opposition but with authorization from a majority of those voting at the meetings, Phibun issued formal recognition of the French-controlled Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian governments. He drafted the announcement personally.43 Phibun’s final victory had not turned out exactly as he or the United States had hoped. Phibun’s promotion of recognition had provoked a divisive public debate, and his eventual decision to abandon the search for consensus embittered Bao Dai’s critics. After Phibun announced recognition, Phot resigned. The two were close friends, with Phibun appointing Phot foreign minister in return for the financial help Phot had provided after Phibun’s release from prison in 1946 on charges of war crimes,44 but Phot considered the recognition issue too important to ignore. It was the first and last time that a Thai foreign minister would quit on a matter of principle. Although Phot dissuaded other ministers from resigning and accepted the position of ambassador to Washington as a sign of his continued support for the field marshal, Phibun regretted his old friend’s departure. Phot’s replacement, a wealthy businessman named Worakan Bancha, had nothing to commend himself to the job other than the financial support he had provided the Coup Group in November 1947. These developments worried the United States. The loss of Phot would be deeply felt, and Phibun’s heavy-handed methods had partially defeated the measure’s secondary aim of mobilizing anticommunist sentiments in the country. The widespread belief that recognition had involved a quid pro quo on aid hampered American efforts to portray the assistance program as an act of disinterested generosity. “It was obvious,” Ambassador Stanton commented, “that

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if left to themselves to judge the question of recognition on its own merits, a large majority of the Cabinet and perhaps even of the military councils would have opposed recognition.”45 Nonetheless, the United States greeted Phibun’s Bao Dai decision as a major triumph. Thai recognition was crucial to the Western effort to portray Bao Dai as a genuine nationalist accepted by independent governments in the region. Phibun’s declaration made Thailand the first and, along with South Korea, one of only two Asian countries to recognize Bao Dai.46 America’s former colony, the Philippines, ignored U.S. pleas on the matter. Phibun’s volteface on the issue, moreover, permanently changed the course of Thai foreign policy. After years of diplomatic caution, Phibun had dared to antagonize Ho, Mao, and Stalin to win points with the United States. This single political decision, backed as yet by no real efforts to fight communism in the country or the region, hardly committed Thailand irrevocably to the West, but, by closing the door to the East that he had until then held open, Phibun laid the path for his final commitment later that year. Even a senior Democrat told the press a week after Phibun’s formal announcement of recognition that, although he considered the decision unwise, now that the field marshal had exposed the country to communist retaliation, he should “follow through with a strong policy.”47 No one in the West considered the price paid for Thai recognition too high. Britain’s Ambassador Thompson described the outcome as “a great success for my United States colleague.”48 Phibun’s decision had set the wheels turning in Thailand’s foreign policy revolution of 1950.

Korea Phibun’s policy revolution gained the momentum that would carry it to completion soon after his Bao Dai decision when Washington finally approved aid for the country. On March 9, after receiving the recommendation of the Bangkok ambassadors’ conference for a Southeast Asian aid program, Acheson delivered a letter to Truman urging that the president authorize $15 million of military assistance for Indochina and $10 million for Thailand. Acheson claimed that U.S. assistance was absolutely necessary to maintain and strengthen Thailand’s anticommunist policies. “Some Thai political elements,” he wrote, “are showing evidence of preparing to swing over to the communist side if the pressure should become too great.” Overstating his case as he often did when trying to get something out of Truman, Acheson warned that “unless Thailand is given military assistance it cannot hold out against communist pressure.”49 The following day, Truman approved the proposal “in principle.”50 Somewhat unexpectedly, economic assistance also came Phibun’s way in

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the spring of 1950. Although the Defense Department resisted any transfer of funds from military programs throughout 1949, by the end of January 1950, Acheson had decided to push for economic aid for Southeast Asia.51 Phibun, apparently getting wind of developments, asked Stanton in early February for a portion of the aid.52 Then, at the beginning of March, Acheson sent a mission headed by R. Allen Griffin, a Republican publisher, on a tour of the nations of the region to present recommendations for programming the economic and technical assistance. Conducting its survey of Thai needs from April 4 to April 12, the Griffin mission suggested a prompt and highly visible package. Although the relatively good health of the Thai economy argued against an assistance program, Griffin noted, political necessity demanded that something be done. “There is hardly any important economic urgency in Thailand,” the mission report commented. “There is a political urgency.” The United States, Griffin advised, should plan its aid program accordingly: “If we are to sustain the present line of Thai orientation, prompt concrete evidence of our appreciation of its partnership should be produced. The speed and nature of U.S. economic and technical aid should be planned with this in mind.”53 Griffin recommended providing Thailand $11.4 million in economic and technical assistance. Aid officials in the State Department agreed, and, in September, several months after Congress actually authorized the assistance, the United States and Thailand signed an accord initiating economic and technical aid.54 The American decisions to provide military and economic aid elated Phibun—and inspired him to bolder acts of political and diplomatic derring-do. Because of the need to decide on the specifics of the Thai program and aid packages for other countries, the Americans had not intended to inform Phibun of official approval of aid, but, on April 1, American press reports citing unnamed sources described Truman’s decision. A week later, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Livingston T. Merchant confirmed to Wan the accuracy of the reports. Although Merchant emphasized that the United States wanted the matter kept secret, Phibun could not restrain himself. When Foreign Minister Worakan reported Wan’s meeting with Merchant to him on April 11, Phibun straightaway called in reporters to announce the U.S. decision.55 Phibun thus was able to claim that his diplomacy and recognition of Bao Dai had won the aid package. While it embarrassed the United States, Phibun had every reason to promote the notion that the Americans had bought Thai diplomatic support. He had made the aid request, after all, for political reasons, and he was not about to forgo its political payoff. Having benefited handsomely from this one initiative, Phibun could not help but jump at the chance to further please the Americans—and complete his postwar, foreign policy revolution—when war came to Korea in June. As with the

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Bao Dai question, the Korean War brought immediate pressure from the United States on Phibun. Within twenty-four hours of the North Korean invasion of the south on June 24, the United States had pushed through the UN Security Council a resolution condemning Northern aggression, and, on June 27, the Security Council called on all UN members to “render every assistance” to the effort to stop the invasion. Two days later, the UN cabled the Thai Foreign Ministry to request material aid. The United States strongly urged Phibun to comply. Again, arms assistance and military politics determined the issue for Phibun. By July, the generals were desperate to loosen the U.S. aid purse strings. Although Truman had approved a $10 million assistance package in principle, Acheson’s anger over Thai inability to stem arms smuggling to Indochina and disputes in Washington over the specifics of the program delayed shipments.56 And more was involved by then than just the $10 million. On June 1, the administration submitted to Congress a request for an additional $75 million for the “general area of China” for use in 1951, and Congress, on June 5, reprogrammed $40 million originally earmarked for China in 1948 for distribution instead in Southeast and East Asia. On July 28, Congress passed the $75 million aid bill. Excited over the prospect of receiving these additional monies and frustrated by the delay in the original aid program, the military pressed Phibun hard to get Thailand its share. The same day that Congress passed the new aid bill, Defense Ministry heads met to discuss Thailand’s armament needs. They pleaded with Phibun to expedite U.S. military assistance.57 Phibun got the message. In response to the UN request for food assistance, Phibun not only agreed to deliver rice but suggested publicly that he would send troops if the UN asked. On the morning of July 3, even before the UN had made any request, he had the cabinet approve in principle the dispatch of military forces. Eleven days later, after the UN formally requested troops, the National Defense Council and the cabinet unanimously voted to issue final approval.58 Phibun’s decision again drew sharp criticism from civilians inside and outside the government. The press opposed the move, and the Foreign Ministry, Konthi has recounted, considered the dispatch of material aid provocative.59 New Foreign Minister Worakan Bancha told the press: “Thailand is a small country. If Thailand [tries to] provide aid in the form of armed forces, it would be most difficult and we would be at our wit’s end [in attempting it].”60 When Phibun presented his policy on the war to Parliament on the afternoon of the cabinet meeting, Khuang attacked the stance as too bold. Other MPs expressed concern over the effects of the rice shipments on local grain prices. When considering the measure on July 22, MPs and senators criticized the deployment

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as unconstitutional, hasty, and dangerous. Thongdi Isarachiwin, who a year and a half earlier had faulted Phibun for tolerating internal communists,61 argued that the dispatch of troops would weaken domestic defenses. Senator Pridithephaphong Thewakun, Phibun’s foreign minister in 1948, pleaded with the field marshal not to divert the nation’s already inadequate defense forces from the more important home front. All in all, parliamentary opinion was overwhelmingly skeptical or outright hostile to the expeditionary force.62 But Phibun made clear to his critics—and the military—what he expected to gain from the dispatch of troops. In Parliament, Phibun defended his position not by citing the justice of the cause or the danger the invasion posed, but by pointing to the windfall that would come Thailand’s way from participation in the UN effort. In return for sending troops to aid France and England in World War I, Thailand had gained concessions at Versailles regarding the two countries’ extraterritoriality privileges. Similarly, Phibun claimed, Thailand could expect a payoff from Korea. In the July 3 session, he told MPs that, “by sending just a small number of troops as a token of our friendship, we will get various things in return.”63 On July 22, he made the connection explicit. “If we invest just a little [in this undertaking],” he predicted, “we might get aid from these countries [the West].” He hoped at the least, he said, that the United States would transfer aircraft and equipment to the Thais for use in Korea and, afterward, in Thailand.64 With this promise of additional weapons uniting the military behind him, Phibun overcame the civilian opposition easily. When push came to shove, Worakan acceded to the measure, and Parliament approved Phibun’s decision despite the qualms of a probable majority of members. The cabinet ministers who had fought the recognition of Bao Dai yielded instantly. Phibun’s ruthlessly executed implementation of that decision in February had taught them the futility of opposing him. This second triumph over the civilians pleased the Americans even more than the first and secured the payoff in military assistance that Phibun had promised the generals. Thailand’s pledge of four thousand troops made it the first Asian country to commit forces to the UN cause in Korea. Although the troops actually proved more of a financial burden than a military asset for the United States, Washington was grateful. Desperate to portray the intervention on South Korea’s behalf as a truly international effort, the United States hailed the Thai decision as evidence of regional backing for the UN. Privately, American officials had nothing but praise for the Thais. One State Department official opined that “never before in Thailand’s history has it so forthrightly committed itself politically in an international situation which might jeopardize its own future sovereign status.”65 Richard R. Ely of the Office of Philippine and

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Southeast Asian Affairs noted that the prompt offer of troops “is unique among Asian countries.”66 Aid programmers’ lethargy and Acheson’s petulance over the arms smuggling problem, therefore, quickly dissipated. On July 14, Truman finally allocated the $10 million approved in principle in March.67 In the first week of August, the World Bank, with U.S. backing, approved a $25 million development loan for Thailand, the first funding it authorized an Asian country.68 Then, in the second half of the month, the United States sent the first arms shipment to Thailand. Before Korea, Washington had assigned Thailand low priority on the list of countries to receive armaments, and, in the immediate aftermath of the invasion, arms exports were halted worldwide, but Phibun’s dispatch of troops raised his status in Washington. Acheson wrote his Defense Department colleagues that “Thai[land]’s determination [to] support U.N. action [in] opposition [to] communism represents [a] political decision [of the] most profound importance in Thai-U.S. relations [and an] indication [of] confidence [in] our promises of mil[itary] aid to those who aid themselves.” “It would be most destructive to [the] morale [of the] Thai,” Acheson concluded, “if their nation[,] which has supported U.S.–U.N. objectives more forthrightly than other SEA nations[,] should receive mil[itary] aid more slowly than those nations.”69 In late August, a State Department representative informed the Thai chargé of the delivery of the weapons just sent. He explained that, “because the [Thai] government has taken a clear stance in recognizing Bao Dai and supporting the United Nations in Korea, on August 24 the State Department was able to arrange the release of the first set of weapons to be sent to Thailand. The reason for doing so is that the arrival of the weapons will have a profound impact on political feelings in Thailand.”70 Despite American denials, Phibun and Washington had engaged in a clear quid pro quo exchanging Thai diplomatic support for U.S. material assistance. Phibun’s final acquisition of American arms with the dispatch of troops to Korea marked a watershed in modern Thai political history. Until then, foreign policy had remained much as it had been since the end of the war, and Phibun pursued a domestic agenda little changed from the time he returned to power in November 1947. In both arenas, Phibun favored caution and moderation. But arms aid and the Bao Dai and Korea decisions set Thailand on a new course. To secure American military assistance, Phibun had steered the ship of state sharply to the right, and, in its wake, the government grew increasingly oppressive and foreign policy turned much more anticommunist. Repression internally and adventurism abroad steadily replaced the circumspect policies of the past five years. These changes were crucial. They helped make Thailand

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the authoritarian, staunchly pro-Western U.S. ally that it would remain for the next two decades.

Completing the Revolution The initiation of American arms aid and Phibun’s consequent decision to send troops to Korea completed the revolution in the Thai government’s postwar international relations begun in the fall of 1949. The dispatch of the expeditionary force aligned Thailand firmly with the West and decisively against the Communists. No longer merely talking about doing something about Communists, Thais would now actually be killing them. Phibun’s decision made him a declared enemy of Stalin’s and Mao’s North Korean allies. It ended the field marshal’s policy of maintaining friendly relations with the communist powers. Demonstrating the depth of his commitment to the West after the dispatch of troops, Phibun had Thailand vote in the UN in February 1951 to censure the Chinese intervention in Korea, and, in May 1951, Thailand voted in favor of a strategic embargo of China. Before 1950, such boldness was unthinkable. The recognition of Bao Dai and the dispatch of troops, however, had brought Thailand to the heart of the Western camp, and there was no going back. Just as military aid, by inspiring the Bao Dai and Korea decisions, revolutionized postwar Thai foreign policy, it also contributed to changes in Thai domestic politics, changes that would increase the government’s authoritarianism. Arms assistance helped transform the country’s foreign policymaking process in a way that strengthened military control of government. Since the war, the Foreign Ministry and the politically active public had opposed any policy that would either limit Thai maneuverability or antagonize a neighbor or foreign power. Partly out of agreement, partly due to his political weakness, Phibun heeded such opinions throughout 1948 and 1949. Whether regarding participation in a Pacific military pact, recognition of the People’s Republic of China, or Indochina policy, Phibun followed the recommendations of the Foreign Ministry on all important foreign affairs issues. Although he ran ahead of public opinion with his anticommunist rhetoric, he never in this period entirely left the public behind. He always took care to lead opinion, not abandon it. In 1950, however, Phibun rejected compromise and caution. By manhandling the opponents of Bao Dai, he humbled the civilian end of the foreign-policymaking apparatus. And by defining this supremely political matter as an issue of national security, he ensured that military concerns would determine the outcome of future foreign policy disputes. Phibun had to pay civilians’ concerns only scant attention with regard to his Korea decision. After that, public opin-

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ion and the parliamentary opposition exerted negligible influence over Thai foreign-policymaking. The Foreign Ministry was reduced after July 1950 to executing, not shaping, policy. With American encouragement, therefore, the military had, by the spring of 1950, extended its hegemony over one more element of the Thai government. American military assistance also strengthened Phibun and the military regime he led. After the Americans agreed to provide assistance, Phibun argued, with good reason, that the decision was his personal victory, and when the first arms shipments arrived in the summer of 1950, his prestige within the military rose to new heights. For the moment, at least, this triumph rallied the army behind Phibun and provided the military regime a greater sense of unity than it had ever enjoyed. By helping to prevent the Coup Group from imploding, therefore, American military assistance gave the regime the stability it needed to fight its internal enemies—and further limit civilian control of government. U.S. military assistance, moreover, energized the government’s lethargic policy toward leftists in the country. Before 1950, the United States, in some ways, fought communism in Thailand more than Phibun himself did. Ambassador Stanton had taken an interest in manipulation of the press from the first, and, in 1949, he initiated an extensive anticommunist propaganda campaign. Beginning that spring, Stanton had the U.S. Information Service (USIS) representative distribute supposedly incriminating clippings from Soviet Affairs to local newspapers and hired a “fairly prominent Thai” to translate anticommunist literature from the Buddhist Society of London. Stanton also arranged for “one of the better known Thai newspaper editors” to translate and publish a series of anticommunist articles by a local American the embassy had engaged.71 Later, Stanton made plans for a program aimed at Chinese-language newspapers.72 In 1949, the USIS began publishing an illustrated magazine portraying American rural life and a political circular purporting to expose the “weak points, lies and contradictions on the Soviet record.” The embassy distributed the circular to “opinion-making leaders in politics, education, [and] military affairs.”73 While the Americans took an active interest in winning the hearts and minds of the Thai people, Phibun had no concerted plan in this period to promote anticommunism among the populace. Stanton complained that “the Thai government has taken no action through the press or the radio to counteract this [Soviet and communist] propaganda or to expose the dangers of Communism.”74 The police chief told Stanton in October that the Thais felt too insecure internationally to increase repression of communists.75 The events of 1950, however, enlivened Phibun and the Thai government. Inspired by the developments on the mainland, communists had by then almost entirely supplanted Kuomintang supporters as leaders of the Chinese commu-

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nity, and Thai leftists grew more outspoken in condemning the United States in 1950. In May of that year, the leftist Thammasat University Student Committee staged a walkout during a Kenneth Landon lecture.76 And in late 1949 and 1950, a small but vocal left wing appeared in Parliament. None of these developments threatened Phibun or the Coup Group, but the field marshal’s policy shift—inspired by the promise and subsequent reality of American military assistance—increased the nuisance value of leftist dissidents. Leftist MPs concentrated their attacks on Phibun’s pro-Western policies and refusal to recognize the People’s Republic of China, and the leftist press repeated the MPs’ arguments.77 At the same time, Phibun’s rebuff of Mao and Ho angered Vietnamese in the northeast and ethnic Chinese. Beijing’s January threat over the radio to incite local Chinese against the Thai government brought this worst nightmare of Phibun closer to reality. In such an atmosphere, a policy of repression gained appeal. When the arms shipments actually started, the argument for repression grew even stronger. As long as aid remained merely a possibility, Phibun could sidestep American moves to pin him down on domestic communists, but once arms entered the pipeline, he could defy his benefactors only at the risk of seeing the flow stopped. Until Phibun’s dispatch of troops to Korea, Acheson explicitly linked Phibun’s policy toward Indochinese arms smuggling to the initiation of weapons shipments.78 After Korea, Phibun could not expect the Americans to let him off the hook so easily. Even as American aid applied pressures, moreover, it created possibilities for Phibun. As long as Thailand remained vulnerable to Viet Minh or Red Chinese invasion and subversion, suppression of communists within the country would merely increase the likelihood of aggression. But the American aid agreement committed the United States more firmly to Thailand’s security. Intentionally symbolic of U.S. resolve, the arms shipments, along with Truman’s quick response to the Korean War, went far in convincing Phibun that the United States was in Southeast Asia and Thailand to stay. After the shipments began, Phibun felt freer to follow his instincts, inclined as ever toward repression, and deal more forcefully with troublemakers on the left. Phibun’s harder stance manifested itself first in the form of a more active anticommunist publicity campaign. On January 30, the National Defense Council was reported to have resolved to expand its program to counter communist influence in Thailand.79 Immediately afterward, Sang Phatthanothai, a close friend and long-time Phibun publicist, began organizing an anticommunist press grouping to supplant the leftist Press Association of Thailand.80 In March, the government distributed leaflets to factory workers warning of communist plans to incite labor unrest, and Phibun had the Buddhist priests’ council pub-

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licly denounce communist pamphlets supposedly aimed at exploiting divisions between the two orders of Thai monks. A leader of the Coup Group, in the same month, called together one hundred and fifty merchants to urge their cooperation in the government’s fight against communism, and the governmentappointed head of Thammasat University lectured students on the dangers of the ideology.81 In July, the government’s Publicity Department took over Sang’s semiofficial Allied Freedom League and began its own anticommunist broadcasts.82 The government transformed the nation’s military journals, in the meantime, into anticommunist mouthpieces. Before 1950, the veterans’ monthly, Khao Thahan Phan Seuk, and the army organ, Yuthakot, published only articles of strictly military interest, but, in the wake of Phibun’s Bao Dai decision, the two journals began printing anticommunist propaganda regularly. The harshly anticommunist “The Great Danger of Communism” appearing in the May 12 issue of Yuthakot typified the new military propaganda.83 The article’s passionate polemics contrasted sharply with the dry, scholarly pieces of previous years. More slowly, the government also intensified its repressive activities in 1950. On February 28, Phibun ordered legal experts to study the possibility of enacting an anticommunist law.84 In March, he ordered the police to find ways to close leftist newspapers, and a month later, the Central Peace Maintenance Committee appointed a group to curb communist publications. Immediately after the Bao Dai decision, Phibun ordered the Interior Ministry to intensify surveillance of Vietnamese in the northeast and forced the Viet Minh mission in Bangkok to move to Rangoon.85 Over the summer, Phibun began taking forceful action. In June, the government announced that it would prosecute any journalist who “reports news aimed at provoking unrest in the country in accordance with communist principles.”86 The police prohibited the import of twenty-one Marxist Chinese-language books and one English-language book about the “new China,” and, in July, the government banned all press comments damaging to Thailand’s foreign relations.87 That November, the police confiscated all issues of the Thai Communist Party organ, Mahachon, and, in early January 1951, arrested the editor of Santiphap and impounded copies of the Maitrisan quarterly.88 At the same time, the last half of 1950 saw increased harassment of Chinese communists.89 The government deported a number of Chinese communists in October.90 That same month, the Interior Ministry initiated a plan to move Vietnamese refugees to the border provinces.91 Phibun was still far from the all-encompassing anticommunist crackdown the Americans wanted. The measures taken against the Chinese remained tentative. U.S. Chargé d’Affaires William Turner complained that “the Thai Police are still only picking at the fringes of Chinese Communist activity in Thai-

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land.”92 Coup Group generals, in fact, were beginning to develop lucrative associations with procommunist Chinese businessmen, associations that would grow closer as the years passed.93 And even when sincerely attempting to repress communists, the Thai government, at this early point, still seemed to be learning the rules of the tricky game of communist fighting. In March, the Interior Ministry ordered teachers and government officials around the country to watch for communist leaflets or leftist literature sent through the mail. Many officials, unfamiliar with their new duties as ideological watchmen, actually opened personal letters delivered to their offices. The ministry had to issue a new order in response for officials to act more discreetly.94 The Thailand of 1950 was still no police state. But a pattern had been set. Communist advances in Asia, Beijing’s belligerence, and the new relationship with the United States had set the Thai government on a path toward decreased tolerance of dissent. Within three years, after the military further consolidated its power, Phibun and the generals gave the Americans the all-out crackdown they wanted. Because most Thai official documents on local communists in the period are closed, it remains uncertain just how much the Americans influenced the government’s repression of dissidents, but the limited evidence available indicates that U.S. policy had a significant effect. Although none of the papers open to researchers reveals Phibun’s views of press censorship, he had banned criticism of the government’s foreign policy and allies (i.e., the United States) in late July, clearly in response to the protests against his dispatch of troops to Korea, a decision made because of American military aid. Similarly, the government almost certainly took measures against the Viet Minh and Vietnamese refugees partly out of fear that recognition of Bao Dai had antagonized them. An Interior Ministry document ordering the surveillance of Vietnamese says so explicitly.95 Although the effectiveness of American efforts to persuade the Thais to tighten repression is hard to measure, documents and events from later years show that the Thais heeded American advice on the matter. While the consequences of the increased sense of security that a more prominent American presence in Thailand fostered are equally difficult to trace, the available evidence demonstrates that the Thais did consider the international situation when setting policy toward domestic communists. In October 1949, the police chief admitted to Stanton that Thai anxiety over the spread of communism in the region prevented the government from taking stronger measures against domestic communists, and a memorandum by government legal experts from 1951 states that the Foreign Ministry opposed a law specifically outlawing communism on the grounds that the act would damage relations with the Soviet Union.96 The conviction of Stanton and other Westerners that Phibun’s ap-

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prehension of the foreign communist powers debilitated his opposition to domestic communists is, at the least, revealing. The Americans certainly had not created the impulse toward repression, which had already arisen in the minds of Phibun and other leading Thais, but U.S. policy strongly reinforced it. U.S. military assistance accelerated and intensified the implementation of repressive measures. Most important politically, U.S. military aid transformed America’s relationship with Thailand’s military government. Thailand’s security requirements had not made alignment with the United States inevitable. Civilians concerned with the country‘s security, such as Phot, Foreign Ministry officials, and both progovernment and opposition politicians, resisted abandonment of the policy of flexibility. Rather, military politics—and the lure of military assistance— made alignment with the United States compelling. The mere prospect of military aid had sparked a revolution in postwar Thai foreign policy amenable to American interests, and, once actually begun, the weapons flow secured Thai diplomatic support on nearly every issue of importance to the United States. Because this military assistance mattered much more to the generals than to civilians, the United States found reason after the arrival of the first arms shipments to view Thailand’s military government more favorably. Many American officials retained democratic ideals with respect to Thailand, and the United States over the next several years resisted the military’s most aggressive power grabs, but the initiation of military assistance created shared interests between the United States and the Thai military. Now, the American position in Thailand depended on military control of the budgetary process, security programs, and foreign policy. After 1950, therefore, advancing authoritarianism and expanding American influence marched in lock step.

Notes 1. Adapted from Daniel Fineman, A Special Relationship: The United States and Military Government in Thailand, 1947–1958 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997). Printed with permission from the University of Hawaii Press. Quoted in Andrew Rotter, The Path to Vietnam: Origins of the Commitment to Southeast Asia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), 95. 2. Ibid., 94–99, 169. 3. Foreign Relations of the United States (henceforth FRUS), 1949 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office), 7, 62–63. 4. Memorandum of conversation by Landon, September 22, 1949, 851G.00B/ 9–2249, RG 59, National Archives and Records Administration (hereafter NARA), College Park, MD. 5. By tradition, the Thai government hired British subjects, such as William Doll, as financial advisers, French as legal advisers, and Americans as foreign policy advis-

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ers. Patton was the last foreign adviser employed by the Foreign Ministry. On American advisers, see Kenneth Young, “The Special Role of American Advisers in Thailand, 1902–1949,” Asia 14 (1969): 1–31. 6. K.S.P. (Kenneth S. Patton), “Memorandum Regarding: 1) Conference at Manila 2) Recognition of Communist Government in China 3) Bao Dai Regime in Indo-China [in English],” July 21, 1949, Diplomatic Relations (Southeast Asia) Series, 2.1.1/4, Thailand Foreign Ministry Library (hereafter TFML). 7. Memorandum of conversation by Butterworth, September 22, 1949, 851G.00B/ 9-2249, RG 59, NARA. 8. The word Wan used, ruk-ran, can mean either aggression or invasion. 9. Phot to Phibun, October 15, 1949, Cabinet Papers, [3] SR.0201.13. 1, box 1, file 2, Thailand National Archives (hereafter TNA). 10. FRUS, 1949, 7, 113, and 1950, 6, 697. 11. Phot to Phibun, May 21, 1949, Cabinet Papers, [3] SR.0201.13.1, box 1, file 2, TNA. 12. Phot to Phibun, October 15, 1949, Cabinet Papers, [3] SR.0201.13.1, box 1, file 2, TNA. 13. Phot to Phibun, November 15, 1949, Diplomatic Relations (Southeast Asia) Series, 2.1.1/4, TFML. 14. Phot to Phibun, December 3, 1949, Diplomatic Relations (Southeast Asia) Series, 2.1.1/4, TFML; Memorandum of conversation by Landon, December 21, 1949, 751G.92/12-2149, RG 59, NARA. 15. Memorandum of conversation by Landon, December 21, 1949, 751G.92/122149, RG 59, NARA. 16. Phibun comments on Phot memorandum to Phibun, December 2, 1949, Cabinet Papers, [3] SR.0201.13.1, box 1, file 2, TNA. 17. Stanton to Secretary of State, December 10, 1949, 892.20/121049, RG 59, NARA. 18. Rotter, Path to Vietnam, 177. 19. Merchant to Ohly, December 27, 1949, Lot File 60 D 11, RG 59, NARA; FRUS, 1950, 6, 5–8. 20. Phot to Phibun, February 15, 1950, Cabinet Papers, [3] SR.0201.13.1, box 1, file 2, TNA. 21. Lacy to Butterworth, March 17, 1950, 792.5MAP/31750, RG 59, NARA. 22. R.K. Jain, ed., China and Thailand, 1949–1983 (Delhi: Radiant Publishers, 1984), 6–8. 23. Robert M. Blum, Drawing the Line: The Origin of the American Containment Policy in East Asia (New York: Norton, 1982), 188. 24. Rotter, Path to Vietnam, 169–70. 25. Gary Hess, The United States’ Emergence as a Southeast Asian Power, 1940–1950 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 353–55. 26. Bangkok Post, January 9 and February 6, 1950; Stanton to Secretary of State, January 19, 1950, 792.00-(W)/11950, RG 59, NARA. 27. FRUS, 1950, 6, 725; Bangkok Post, February 9, 1950. 28. Bangkok Post, February 10, 1950. 29. Ibid., January 14, 1950. 30. Ibid., February 14, 1950; Stanton to Secretary of State, February 24, 1950, 792.00-(W)/22450, RG 59, NARA.

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31. Bangkok Post, March 7, 1950. 32. New York Times, February 14, 1950. 33. Memorandum of conversation by Jessup, February 11, 1950, 611.92/21150, RG 59, NARA. 34. Ibid.; New York Times, February 14, 1950. 35. Konthi Suphamongkhon, “Bantheuk reuang Kanrap-rorng Rathaban Bao Dai, Khamen, lae Lao” (Memorandum on the Recognition of the Bao Dai, Cambodian, and Laotian Governments), February 11, 1950, Diplomatic Relations (Southeast Asia) series, 2.1.1/3, TFML. 36. Personal interview with Konthi Suphamongkhon, March 9, 1992; Konthi Suphamongkhon, Kanwithesobai khorng Thai (Thai Foreign Policy) (Bangkok: Thammasat University Press, 1984), 456. 37. FRUS, 1950, 6, 748. 38. Bangkok Post, February 14, 1950. 39. Ibid., February 13, 1950. 40. Kiattisak (weekly), February 27, 1950. 41. Bangkok Post, February 21, 1950, and February 23, 1950. 42. Bangkok Post, February 23, 1950. 43. Konthi, Kanwithesobai, 456. 44. Personal interview with Konthi Suphamongkhon, March 9, 1992. 45. Stanton, “Summary of Political Events . . . February 1950,” March 13, 1950, 792.00/31350, RG 59, NARA. 46. Evelyn Colbert, Southeast Asia in International Politics, 1941–1956 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), 209. 47. Bangkok Post, March 7, 1950. 48. Thompson to Foreign Office, March 1, 1950, FO 371/84363, Public Record Office, Great Britain. 49. FRUS, 1950, vol. 6, 42. 50. Acheson, “Conversation with the President,” March 9, 1950, 792.5-MAP/3950, and Webb to Bangkok embassy, March 13, 1950, 792.5-MAP/31050, RG 59, NARA. 51. Rotter, Path to Vietnam, 191. 52. Edwin F. Stanton, Brief Authority: Excursions of a Common Man in an Uncommon World (New York: Harper, 1956), 233. 53. Samuel P. Hayes, ed., The Beginning of Aid to Southeast Asia: The Griffin Mission of 1950 (Lexington, MA: Heath, 1971), 258. 54. FRUS, 1950, 6, 60. The Thai program resembled the so-called Point Four technical assistance program provided to other developing countries in Asia, not the capital transfer programs of the Marshall Plan’s Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA). The Thai program, therefore, has often been referred to as a Point Four program. In fact, however, the ECA, not Point Four’s Technical Cooperation Administration, funded Chinese and Southeast Asian (including Thai) economic assistance programs. See Charles Wolf, Jr., Foreign Aid: Theory and Practice in Southeast Asia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960), 60–62, for an explanation of the differences between the two agencies. 55. Wan to Worakan, April 10, 1950, and Worakan to Phibun, April 11, 1950, Cabinet Papers, [3] SR.0201.13.1, box 1, file 2, TNA; Bangkok Post, April 11, 1950. 56. FRUS, 1950, vol. 6, 96–97.

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57. Maj. Gen. Plod Plodporapak Phibunphanuwat to Phibun, July 10, 1950, and Phibun comments, July 13, 1950, Cabinet Papers, [3] SR.0201.13.1, box 1, file 2, TNA. 58. Kammakan Jat-tham Prawat Thahan Thai nai Songkhram Kaoli, Prawatisat Kanrop khorng Thahan Thai nai Songkhram Kaoli (History of the Fighting of Thai Soldiers in the Korean War) (Bangkok: Kammakan Jat-tham Prawat Thahan Thai nai Songkhram Kaoli, 1981), 48, in TFML. 59. Personal interview with Konthi Suphamongkhon, March 9, 1992. 60. Sayam Nikorn, July 1, 1950. 61. Rai-ngan Kanprachum Sapha Phu-thaen Samai Wisaman Chud thi 1 2491 (Records of the House of Representatives Special Session, Series 1, 1948), session 8/2491, December 16, 1948, 631. 62. Rai-ngan Kanprachum Sapha Phu-thaen Samai Saman Khrang thi 2 P. S. (Records of the House of Representatives Second Ordinary Session, 1950), session 9/2493, July 3, 1950, 665–96; Rai-ngan Kanprachum Rathasapha P.S. 2492 Lem 1 lae Rai-ngan Kanprachum Ruamkan khorng Rathasapha, P.S. 2492–2494 (Records of the Sessions of Parliament 1949, vol. 1, and Records of the Joint Sessions of Parliament, 1949–1951), series 1, joint session 8/2493, July 22, 1950, 740–812. 63. Rai-ngan Kanprachum Sapha Phu-thaen Samai Saman Khrang thi 2 P.S. 2493 (Records of the House of Representatives Second Ordinary Session, 1950), session 9/2493, July 3, 1950, 662, 669–670. 64. Rai-ngan Kanprachum Rathasapha, P.S. 2492, and Lem 1 lae Rai-ngan Kanprachum Ruamkan khorng Rathasapha, P.S. 2492–2494 (Records of the Sessions of Parliament 1949, vol. 1, and Records of the Joint Sessions of Parliament, 1949–1951), series 1, joint session 8/2493, July 22, 1950, 790. 65. Lacy to Rusk, July 25, 1950, 792.5-MAP/72550, RG 59, NARA. 66. Ely to Rusk, August 8, 1950, 792.5-MAP/8850, RG 59, NARA. 67. Truman to Secretary of State, July 14, 1950, 792.5-MAP/71450, RG 59, NARA. 68. New York Times, August 2, 1950, and January 3, 1951; FRUS, 1950, 6, 134–35. 69. FRUS, 1950, 6, 134–35. 70. Worakan to Phibun, August 28, 1950, Cabinet Papers, [3] SR.0201.13.1, box 1, file 2, TNA. 71. Stanton, “Opening of Communist Propaganda Campaign in the Thai Press,” June 27, 1949, 892.00B/62749, RG 59, NARA. 72. Stanton to Secretary of State, August 24, 1949, 892.00B/82449, RG 59, NARA. 73. Stanton, “Review of Communist Propaganda in Bangkok,” May 5, 1949, 892 .00 B/5549, RG 59, NARA. 74. Stanton, “Opening of Communist Propaganda Campaign in the Thai Press,” June 27, 1949, 892.00B/62749, RG 59, NARA. 75. Stanton to Secretary of State, October 25, 1949, 892B.00/102549, RG 9, NARA. 76. Turner, “Monthly Political Report for May 1950,” June 15, 1950, 792.00/61550, RG 59, NARA. 77. For leftists’ interrogatories on recognition of China, see report on parliamentary debate, October 10, 1949, Diplomatic Relations (Southeast Asia) series, 2.1.1/4, TFML; Rai-ngan Kanprachum Sapha Phu-thaen Samai Saman, P.S. 2492 (Records of the House of Representatives Ordinary Session, 1949), vol. 1, session 8/2492, December 1, 1949, 785. In the July 22, 1950, debate on the dispatch of troops to Korea, leftists also, of course, opposed the government’s policy.

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78. FRUS, 1950, 6: 96–97. 79. Stone, “Summary of Political Events . . . January 1950,” February 20, 1950, 792.00/2-2050, RG 59, NARA; and Stone to Secretary of State, February 23, 1950, 792.00/22350, RG 59, NARA. 80. Stone to Secretary of State, February 23, 1950, 792.00/2-2350, RG 59, NARA. 81. Stanton to Secretary of State, March 16, 1950, 792.00-(W)/31650, RG59, NARA. 82. Thongchai Pheungkanthai, “Latthi Khormmunit lae Nayobai Tor-tan khorng Rathaban Thai P.S. 2468–2500 (Communism and the Thai Government’s Anticommunist Policies, 1925–1957)” (master’s thesis, Chulalongkorn University, 1972), 385–86; Kasian Tejapira, “Commodifying Marxism: The Formation of Modern Thai Radical Culture, 1927–1958” (PhD diss., Cornell University, 1992), 438. 83. Phayathai [pseud.], “Mahantaphai jak Khormmunit” (The Great Danger of Communism), Yuthakot, May 12, 1950, pp. 31–40. 84. Thongchai, “Latthi Khormmunit,” 407. 85. Phraya Ramratchaphakdi to permanent secretary, Foreign Ministry, March 2, 1950, Diplomatic Relations (Southeast Asia) series, 2.1.1/6, TFML; Wan to Worakan, April 10, 1950, Cabinet Papers, [3] SR.0201 13.1, box 1, file 2, TNA. 86. Kasian, “Commodifying Marxism,” 445. 87. Ratchakitjanubeksa, “Reuang Ham Sang reu Nam Sing Phim khao ma nai Ratcha-anajak Thai,” June 19, 1950, P.S. 2493, lem thi 67, phak 1, lem 3, torn thi 35, 2721, and “Reuang Ham Khosana reuang thi kiowkap Kanmeuang rawang Prathet,” July 20, 1950, P.S. 2493, lem thi 67, phak 2, chabap phiset, torn thi 40, 1. 88. Suwimon Rungjaroen, “Botbat khorng Naknangseuphim nai Kanmeuang Thai rawang P. S. 2490–2501” (The Role of Journalists in Thai Politics, 1947–1958) (master’s thesis, Chulalongkorn University, 1983), 147. 89. William G. Skinner, Chinese Society in Thailand: An Analytical History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1957), 328. 90. Turner, “Monthly Political Report, October 1950,” November 22, 1950, 792.00/ 112250, RG 59, NARA. 91. Memorandum of conversation by Stanton, October 4, 1950, 792.00/10450, RG 59, NARA. 92. Turner, “Chinese Affairs in Thailand, November 1950,” December 12, 1950, 792.00/121250, RG 59, NARA. 93. Office of Intelligence Research, “Political Opportunities for Chinese Communists in Thailand,” OIR 5151, August 21, 1950, NARA. 94. Luang Chamnan-aksorn to minister of the interior, March 3 and 22, 1950, Interior Ministry Papers, M.T. 0201.2.1.57/2, TNA. 95. Phraya Ramratchaphakdi to permanent secretary, Foreign Ministry, March 2, 1950, Diplomatic Relations (Southeast Asia) series, 2.1.1/6, TFML. 96. Stanton to Secretary of State, October 25, 1949, 892B.00/102549, RG59, NARA; “Note on Anti-Communist Law,” n.d. [prepared sometime after November 30, 1951, on request of Phibun], bound volumes of law and draft acts, vol. 452, “Kotmai Porngkan Khormmunit” section, “Rang Ph. B. R. Porngkan Kankratham an pen Phai tor Chat” part, Juridical Council Library. I would like to thank David Strechfuss for sharing with me his notes on the Juridical Council anti-communist act papers.

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12. Southeast Asian Perceptions of the Domino Theory Ang Cheng Guan

Background

The domino theory was one of the most influential analytical paradigms during the Cold War years, in particular with regard to Southeast Asia. Scholars have variously described it as “the central organizing concept behind American containment strategy,”1 “the heart of American foreign policy in the Third World,”2 and “the sole premise on which American decisions about Southeast Asia were based in the years following World War II.”3 The domino theory was also and still is a controversial theory.4 In 1995, Robert S. McNamara, former Kennedy administration secretary of defense, dismissed the validity of the domino theory.5 By contrast, Walt Rostow, a national security adviser to the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, remained convinced until his death in 2003 that U.S. policy with regards to Vietnam had been correct. To Jerome Slater, “in part it (the domino theory) is mere ideology, an attempt to justify a policy of indiscriminate global anticommunism, and in part it is simply a misplaced metaphor, a failure of intellect, a substitute for historical observation and careful analysis.”6 One writer argued that it should not have been called a “theory” since by definition a theory is a working hypothesis which should be subjected to empirical examination.7 Robert Jervis offers a more measured assessment. From the collected wisdom of his multi-authored study of the domino theory, he made two observations. The first is that it is easier to describe the variety of domino beliefs than judge their validity. The other is that it is impossible to render a general judgment on the validity of the domino theory because the judgments must necessarily be condi-

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tional, and also there have been few empirical studies on the consequences of limited retreats and losses on the periphery.8 Despite its centrality to understanding U.S. foreign policies and its implications for concerned regions, the validity of the theory itself has until recently ironically not attracted much scholarly attention.9 A number of studies have begun to question the relevance of the theory for Europe and Central America. Notably lacking is the perspective from Southeast Asia, where the original “Asian dominoes” were located. Robert J. McMahon, for example, lamented that for all the attention devoted to the war’s impact on the United States, the existing available literature glosses over the war’s consequences on Southeast Asia.10 This essay is an attempt to fill this gap. It will, in Jervis’s words, “describe the variety of “domino beliefs” by attempting to show what the various Southeast Asian countries thought about the domino theory. At the same time, it will also bring together the United States, the Southeast Asian governments and the Southeast Asian communist dimensions during the period between 1945 and 1962 (which is the time frame of this book). Because the domino theory was the basis for the U.S. strategy of containment and its involvement in Vietnam, it is perhaps proper to begin with the American perspective. President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave the best known (as well as the first public) explanation of the domino theory with regard to Southeast Asia during his press conference on April 7, 1954—in the midst of fierce fighting between the French and the Vietnamese communists at Dien Bien Phu and a week after Secretary of State John Foster Dulles declared (to the Overseas Press Club of America) that the United States would not allow the communists to control Indochina and called for “united action” on the part of the Western countries to forestall that eventuality). Asked by Robert Richards of the Copley Press to comment on the strategic importance of Indochina for the free world, and to America in particular, Eisenhower replied: You have, of course both the specific and the general when you talk about such things. First of all, you have the specific value of a locality in its production of materials that the world needs. Then you have the possibility that many human beings under a dictatorship that is inimical to the free world. Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the “falling domino” principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences. Now with respect to the first one, two of the items from this

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particular area that the world uses are tin and tungsten. They are very important. There are others, of course, the rubber plantations and so on. Then with respect to most people passing under this domination, Asia, after all, has already lost some 450 million of its peoples to the Communist dictatorship, and we simply can’t afford greater losses. But when we come to the possible sequence of events, the loss of Indochina, of Burma, of Thailand, of the Peninsula, and Indonesia following, now you begin to talk about areas that not only multiply the disadvantages that you would suffer through loss of materials, sources of materials, but now you are talking about millions and millions of people. Finally, the geographical position achieved thereby does many things. It turns the so-called island defensive chain of Japan, Formosa, of the Philippines and to the southward; it moves to threaten Australia and New Zealand. It takes away, in its economic aspects, that region that Japan must have as a trading area or Japan, in turn, will have only one place in the world to go—that is, toward the communist areas in order to live. So, the possible consequences of the loss are just incalculable to the free world.11 Although made famous by Eisenhower, the vision of falling dominoes in Southeast Asia goes back to as early as 1949. The genesis of the widely held assumption in Washington that if Indochina fell to communism, the remaining Southeast Asian states would inexorably succumb to communist infiltration and be taken over in a chain reaction, can be found in the Nationalists’ (Kuomintang) withdrawal from mainland China. This prognosis was first mentioned in a National Security Council memorandum (NSC 48/1) of June 1949. At that time, the Soviet Union rather than China was seen as the principal threat. This assumption was more explicitly stated in a NSC memorandum (NSC 64) of February 27, 1950, that focused exclusively on Indochina. Indochina was considered to be of particular importance because of its geographical proximity to the newly established communist China. After the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, China replaced the Soviet Union as the principal threat in Southeast Asia. In a March 5, 1952, memorandum, Paul H. Nitze, head of the Policy Planning Staff at the Department of State, stated that “the loss of Southeast Asia would represent an unacceptable threat to (the) position of (the) U.S., both in (the) Far East and world-wide.”12 The domino theory or principle (as it is sometimes called in the Pentagon Papers) was stated in “its purest form” in NSC 124/2 of June 1952. The memorandum made the point that the loss of any single Southeast Asian state would have implications for the stability of

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Europe and the security of the United States.13 Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and even Nixon accepted this worldview. For Nixon, the domino theory was confirmed by the fall of China—Asia’s largest domino—which contributed to the success of Dien Bien Phu.14 To Kissinger, The rulers of Hanoi were anything but the benign nationalists so often portrayed by gullible sympathizers; they were cold, brutal revolutionaries determined to dominate all of Indochina. The impact of a North Vietnamese victory on the prospects of freedom and national independence in Southeast Asia was certain to be grave, especially on governments much less firmly established than was the case a decade later; the much-maligned domino theory—shared by all the non-Communist governments in the area—turned out to be correct.15 The urgent task of the Nixon administration was to formulate a strategy for an honorable American withdrawal from the Vietnam War, which according to Kissinger, “soon came against the reality that had also bedeviled its predecessor.16 Whether Nixon (and Kissinger) believed that the theory was still valid after 1969 was, however, ambiguous. But that is beyond the scope of this paper. Ironically, while there was ample debate within official Washington over how best to forestall such a chain reaction and whether American military intervention was the correct approach, the domino theory and its underlying assumptions were never rigorously questioned.17 Those assumptions rested in the minds of the policymakers of the era. As Doris Kearns explained, [W]hen Johnson took the presidential oath, behind him was a century of American involvement and concern with Asia, three Pacific wars, two decades of cold war accompanied by the feared possibility of a nuclear apocalypse, and a widely held belief—almost a dogma—that the area of confrontation was shifting to the “third world.” Johnson had therefore, as Kearns pointed out, “inherited not only an office but a world view” that his advisers and the foreign policy establishment from Acheson, to Dulles, Rusk and Bundy all shared.18 This outlook was both powerful and pervasive. Clark M. Clifford recalled the subject discussed in the meeting between Eisenhower and President-elect Kennedy on January 19, 1961, where he was the note-taker. He wrote: That morning’s discussion, and the gravity with which President Eisenhower addressed the problem, had a substantial impact on

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me. He and his advisers were finishing eight years of responsible service to the nation. I had neither facts nor personal experience to challenge the assessment of the situation, even if I had the inclination to do so. The thrust of the presentation was the importance to the United States of taking a firm stand in Southeast Asia, and I accepted that judgment.19 Walt W. Rostow, who until 1961 when he became President Kennedy’s national security adviser, was a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, presented the most coherent concept underlying the domino theory. The so-called Rostow Doctrine, which has been described as “the most far-reaching American political-military doctrine/strategy employed in South Vietnam,” was based on the following assumptions: The world was caught in a communist versus capitalist struggle and the outcome would be decided in the developing countries. South Vietnam was the linchpin. The prospect of international order depended on whether the developing countries could shift to a Western form of economic development. The principal impediment was communism and communist-supported guerrilla warfare. According to Rostow, “it is on the weaker nations—facing their most difficult transitional moments—that the Communists could concentrate their attention. They are the scavengers of the modernization process.”20 In An American Policy in Asia (1955), he cited Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Indonesia as these “weaker nations.” It was the general perception that the then non-communist incumbent governments in Southeast Asia were “much less firmly established” (as described by Henry Kissinger) and as such were weak which in turn made them most vulnerable to a combination of communist subversion and guerrilla warfare. As Rostow explained, “such operations do not require masses of troops or modern equipment. They do not demand that Soviet or Chinese Communist troops cross borders and create, politically as well as militarily, targets for major American military strength.”21 Apart from Rostow’s writings, one would be hard put to find a document in any form that clearly spelled out the assumptions underpinning the domino theory for Southeast Asia. Those who had a role in developing the “theory” never explicitly stated it, which accounts to some degree for the still ongoing and divisive debate within the academic community over whether U.S. involvement and commitment in Southeast Asia during the Cold War years was principally rooted in “economic” or “strategic” interests. And to these, scholars have now added the elements of “politics,” “culture,” and “ideology.” Robert McMahon, who attempts to synthesize the different viewpoints, has argued that “economic and strategic foundations of U.S. policy were so closely

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interrelated that they are best understood as mutually reinforcing phenomena” and that “interests and ideas cannot be so easily separated.”22 Scholarship on the subject generally has been predominantly American-centric, focused on American decision making. This is true even in the case of someone like Robert McMahon who has carved for himself a reputation as one of the foremost scholars on U.S.–Southeast Asia relations. In his concluding paragraph of his essay, “The United States and Southeast Asia in an Era of Decolonization, 1945–1965,” he wrote: The importance that American strategists came to attach to Southeast Asian developments and to the area’s international orientation derived not from some clearheaded, objective reading of the external environment, but from a highly subjective reading. That reading was conditioned by the hope, dreams, fears, biases, and collective memories of a particular society with its own particular cultural values, historical experiences, and deeply held beliefs. There is, in short, something peculiarly and particularly American about the way in which U.S. leaders apprehended dangers and identified interests and opportunities in postwar Southeast Asia.23

Southeast Asian Perspectives Historian John Lewis Gaddis, in a thought-provoking article entitled, “New Conceptual Approaches to the Study of American Foreign Relations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives,” observed that international affairs, from the American point of view, tends to flow in one direction, that “Americans affect what happens to other nations and peoples, but other nations and people seldom affect what happens to Americans,” unaware that influence can also flow from areas of “weakness” to those of “strength.”24 The Southeast Asian dimension, both communist and non-communist, is as significant as the American dimension, new and weak though the Southeast Asian states were during this period. Two analogies would perhaps illustrate this importance: The history of a game of chess cannot be accurately documented by only recording the moves of the white or the black player. Nor will the history of any team sport will not be complete by only recording the moves of one player of one side however dominant. That said, the historian of Southeast Asia has his/her own set of difficulties to circumvent. The opening of the once secret communist archives has enabled historians to construct a fuller picture of the Cold War period, which until its end had been largely shaped by the reading of primary documents declassified

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regularly by the noncommunist Western governments, particularly the United States and Britain. In the last decade, there has been a proliferation of scholarly writings on various aspects of the Cold War that relate to Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and to a lesser extent communist China and Northeast Asia.25 In contrast, the general consensus is that the literature of the Cold War in Southeast Asia, with the exception of Indochina and the Vietnam War, bucks this trend.26 We know much more now than before about the communist Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos) part of the story. A small amount of information regarding communism in Indonesia in the early post–World War II years has also become available through the research of Larisa Efimova in the former Soviet Foreign Ministry archive.27 Chin Peng’s memoir (published in 2003) further widens our knowledge horizon of the communist side of the Cold War in Southeast Asia beyond the Indochinese states. Besides the communist sources, there are two sets of materials that, to this author’s knowledge, have not been fully utilized by scholars in the domino theory debate. First, Southeast Asian sources such as speeches of, interviews given by and memoirs by Southeast Asian political leaders and diplomats, and, second, the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series, specifically the volumes that pertain to Southeast Asia published in the 1990s.28 A diplomat stationed in a foreign country is often described as the “eyes and ears” of his government. From the FRUS documents and memoirs, one can pick out the “Southeast Asian inputs” that would have contributed to the formulation of U.S. foreign policy toward the region. While these different types of sources cannot fully replace the indigenous archives, used in complement and judiciously, they can serve as a useful point of departure in our effort to make better sense of the Southeast Asian perspective of the Cold War. Two path-breaking studies that tap into both the indigenous, albeit limited, as well as Western sources must be mentioned: Nick Cullather, Illusions of Influence: The Political Economy of United States–Philippines Relations, 1942– 1960 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994); and Daniel Fineman, A Special Relationship: The United States and Military Government in Thailand, 1947–1958 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997). We will return to these two accounts later in this chapter. One long-standing obstacle faced by historians working on the Cold War years in Southeast Asia is the paucity or unavailability of primary documents. Notwithstanding the end of the Cold War, there is no indication that Southeast Asian governments are considering making documents of the Cold War years easily accessible to scholars. However, one need not despair. As mentioned above, a limited amount of both communist and non-communist sources have

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become available. These, in addition to existing and not fully tapped sources can provide the “scaffoldings” for a tentative reconstruction of the international history of Southeast Asia in the early Cold War years. The year 1945 marked the end of the Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia. The end of World War II destroyed the prewar relationship between the colonial powers (the British, French, Dutch, and Portuguese) and their Southeast Asian colonies. In the words of Milton Osborne, “For all the countries of Southeast Asia, the next decades were dominated by the issue of independence, how it would be granted or resisted, and whether it would be gained by violence or in peace.”29 The states shared a common goal, but the paths each country took, their histories were different and complex. The details are too convoluted for this short essay but any attempt at generalization would also not present an accurate picture. Since the subject of this essay is on the domino theory, it would be both profitable and reasonable if we zoom in on the challenge posed by indigenous communist parties in the various Southeast Asian states between 1945 and 1962, taking in the countries in order of independence.

Indonesia Indonesia had declared its dependence from the Dutch on August 17, 1945. But that was more declaratory than substantial because the Indonesians had to fight the Dutch when the colonial masters returned in 1946. The military struggle against the Dutch continued until 1949 when Indonesia finally achieved full sovereignty on December 27, 1949. The Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) was only one of many political groups that had participated in the Indonesian struggle for independence, fighting alongside the nationalists. However, the communists attempted to usurp the Indonesian revolution in September 1948 from their base in Madiun, Central Java. The “Madiun Affair,” as it is known in Indonesian history, refers to the Indonesian army‘s crushing of the communist movement. From then on, the military had an uneasy relationship with the communists whom they viewed as dangerous and untrustworthy, who would put the interest of their party above the country. The PKI was able to gradually recover from its 1948 setback. Documents from the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History reveal that Stalin was interested in the potential of the PKI as a leader of the national liberation movement in Indonesia. Both Moscow and Beijing were actively involved in helping the PKI develop a new strategy and program after the Madiun Affair.30 By 1955, the PKI was making considerable progress in regaining its pre-1948 strength. In a conversation with the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia in early 1955, Djuanda Kartawidjaja (director general of the Indonesian Na-

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tional Planning Committee and subsequently minister of state for planning before becoming prime minister in 1957) said that he had never been so concerned about the rise of the communist strength in Indonesia since the Madiun uprising of September 1948.31 In March 1955, U.S. intelligence judged that a communist attempt to take over the government by force in 1955 was an unlikely scenario. The danger of an external armed aggression against Indonesia was also considered to be remote. Yet the intelligence community noted that the PKI, through its tactic of supporting the government and espousing popular national and local issues, had been able to increase its prestige and appeal, thereby increasing its membership and extending its organization. There was therefore a long-term danger that Indonesia could fall into communist hands by force, subversion, or legal means.32 By August 1957, intelligence reports were becoming less sanguine. While the anticommunist forces remained strong in the outer Indonesian islands, the communists were apparently gaining strength in Java. The Indonesian military, which was supposedly the stalwart against communism, was, the sources suggested, less cohesive than a year ago. Non-communist and anticommunist groups had been unable to cooperate against the communist and procommunist forces. The PKI was seen as the best-organized group in Indonesia with the greatest potential to take control of Java.33 Former Indonesian Vice President Mohammad Hatta was somewhat more positive in his assessment but he, too, felt that the situation would turn critical if the non-communist parties failed to coordinate their efforts.34 By the end of the year, the political situation was in a fluid state. This state of affairs continued until the communists were completely decimated in late 1965. Simply put, the fundamental political disagreement was the issue of how to manage the communist problem in the country. Sukarno’s solution was to bring the communists into government whereas Hatta and others were adamant that the communists must be excluded. Sukarno saw himself as a nationalist and not a communist. He was of the view that there was no contradiction in his attitude toward Marxism and Islam (see Rémy Madinier’s essay in this volume). He also believed that Indonesians who voted for the PKI were not necessarily communists but merely left-wing nationalists. He did not appear to be worried by the fact that the PKI could exploit those supposedly left-wing nationalist votes to gain power. Sukarno saw the reason for Indonesia’s close ties with the communist bloc countries in the bloc’s support for Indonesian aspirations to regain West Irian. He also felt that there was much that Indonesia could learn from China’s economic advances.35 General Nasution, in a conversation with the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia in April 1959, revealed that the PKI was going all out to infiltrate the military

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as well as trying to split Sukarno from him, him from the commanders, and the non-communist parties from each other. Although he expressed confidence that the communists would not be successful in their efforts,36 by August 1959 it was becoming evident that the political forces in Indonesia were becoming polarized between the army and the PKI with Sukarno in the center holding the balance. By 1961, the PKI had become strongly entrenched in all government institutions except the cabinet. All major non-communist parties had been eliminated and the army had—for the first time—accepted a sizable amount of Soviet aid. Nevertheless, U.S. intelligence assessments in early 1961 predicted that Sukarno would continue to be successful in balancing both the army and the PKI, and the balance of forces in Indonesia was unlikely to change dramatically in the next year or so.37 Sukarno’s sympathy for the communist cause in Vietnam and Laos came across most clearly in his April 24, 1961 conversation with President Kennedy. Sukarno sought America’s recognition that social revolution was an essential part of Asian nationalism. Sukarno argued that the United States should allow the agreements reached at the 1954 Geneva Conference to be carried out; otherwise the Vietnam problem would never be resolved. He also believed that social revolution was inevitable in Laos and that the Pathet Lao was successful because it represented popular desires better than the non-communist side. Sukarno seemed convinced that Ho Chi Minh was trying to achieve social and economic revolution within the framework of nationalism. To him, Moscow’s support for both Vietnamese communist national aspirations and Indonesia’s interest in regaining West Irian had nothing to do with communism. “Use the glass of nationalism to see Asia,” Sukarno advised.38 Sukarno launched the so-called “Confrontation” against Malaya and Singapore in December 1962, which turned violent in September 1963. Sukarno demanded that the British colonies of Sarawak and North Borneo, Singapore, and Brunei be given independence as separate entities and should not be integrated into a Federation of Malaya, which he perceived as a neocolonial conspiracy to dominate the region. Sukarno’s demand, in the words of R.B. Smith, “created the opportunity for leftist participation in a ‘liberation struggle,’”39 which could have escalated into another “Vietnam War” had it not been for the annihilation of the PKI in late 1965.

Vietnam As was the case in Indonesia, Ho Chi Minh’s proclamation of the independence of Vietnam in early September 1945 was more declaratory than real. The Vietnamese communists would be forced to struggle against the French cul-

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minating in the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. But unlike the Indonesian communists who were one element of many involved in the Indonesian revolution, the provisional government under Ho Chi Minh was dominated by the Vietnamese communists. Whereas most U.S.-centric accounts of the Vietnam War begin in 1965, the Vietnamese communists begin their story in July 1954. To them, July 1954 marked the beginning of a new phase in the Vietnamese struggle for the reunification of the country. Even as talks were going on in Geneva (May 8–July 21, 1954) to find a negotiated settlement to the ongoing war against the French, the Vietnamese communist leadership at the Sixth Plenary session of the Lao Dong Party Central Committee (July 15–18, 1954) had already concluded that North and South Vietnam could not be peacefully reunified and that they had to begin preparing for an eventual military confrontation with the United States, which had “the greatest economic potential and the most powerful armed forces amongst the imperialist powers.” But they hoped that the inevitable could be delayed as long as possible until they had rebuilt their wartorn economy and the rag-tag Vietnamese People’s Army (VPA) had been transformed into a modern and regular revolutionary force. By 1956 it was becoming obvious that there would elections to reunify the country as specified in the July 21, 1954, Geneva Agreement would not take place. The Vietnamese communist leadership started to “debate” on the best strategy to achieve the goal of reunification. This “debate” continued right into the late 1960s. While the goal of reunification was shared by all, differences regarding the pace to achieve that goal were recurrent issues of contention. For a brief period until 1957, there was a consensus at the highest level that the top priority ought to be rebuilding North Vietnam’s shattered economy and modernizing the VPA. Toward the end of 1957, however, the communists in South Vietnam were beginning to feel the heat of Ngo Dinh Diem’s repressive measures. Although the first indications of a change of mind by the Hanoi leadership emerged as early as December 1957, until March 1958 a military campaign to achieve reunification was still considered neither feasible nor achievable, a view that was also shared by the Russians and Chinese. By mid-1958, Diem’s renewed efforts to exterminate the communists in South Vietnam, which culminated in the passing of Law 10/59 (May 6, 1959), were nearly breaking the back of the communist struggle in the South. According to a Vietnamese communist source, at the end of 1958 and in early 1959, Diem’s policy of terror in the South had reached its height.40 This period has been described as the “blackest, most hopeless years” for the people in South Vietnam.41 Hanoi understood that it could no longer continue to advocate restraint without losing the control and allegiance of the Southern com-

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munists as well as the reunification struggle to Diem who had the support of the United States. It was against the above background that the difficult decision to renew the military struggle in the South was reluctantly taken at the landmark Fifteenth Plenary Session of the Lao Dong Party held in January 1959. The decision, however, was not publicized until a week after the promulgation of Law 10/59 in May. Soon after the communiqué was issued, work on the Ho Chi Minh Trail (much of which traversed Laotian territory) began. Even then, when the January 1959 decision was finally translated into action from September 1960 in South Vietnam, the political struggle still took precedence. To enhance the political struggle, the National Liberation Front (NLF) was established on December 20, 1960. The armed struggle was meant to support and not replace the political struggle as was made clear in the January 13, 1961, directive issued by the Lao Dong Party. This was so because the North, specifically the military, was still far from ready to manage an expansion of the war. Moscow and Beijing—Hanoi’s principal sponsors—were lukewarm to the decision to reactivate the armed struggle. Also, during this time, developments in Laos, which were not necessarily within the control of Hanoi (or Moscow or Beijing), but which impinge on the situation in Vietnam, consumed much of the Vietnamese communists’ energy and attention in 1960, 1961, and up to mid-1962. The “Protocol and the Declaration of Neutrality of Laos” were finally signed on July 23 in Geneva, finally bringing the International Conference on the Settlement of the Laotian Question (which began on May 16, 1961) to an end. After being overshadowed by Laos for almost two years, South Vietnam returned to the forefront as the former moved off center stage.

The Philippines The Philippines achieved independence from the Americans on July 4, 1946. The Filipino government spent the early years fighting the Philippine Communist Party and its military arm, the Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan (known as Huk), which enjoyed much support in central and southern Luzon. The U.S. ambassador to the Philippines noted that Magsaysay’s American orientation was based entirely on the objective of defeating communism.42 In a letter to John Foster Dulles arguing for an increase in American economic aid, Magsaysay wrote: I wish to call your attention to certain facts. While it is true that I have succeeded so far in defeating the Communists here that suc-

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cess is only temporary. The masses of my people expect me to ameliorate their lot. If I cannot show them in a tangible way that their lot is being ameliorated, they will be disillusioned. Disillusionment is dangerous. We must therefore prevent the masses of this country from being disillusioned.43 Dulles, never known to be soft on communism, felt that Magsaysay had some bad personal advisers who told him to play up the internal communist threat in order to extract more from the United States.44 President Kennedy also noted that Manila was constantly complaining that the Americans were not doing enough to stand up to the communists in Asia.45 Although U.S.–Philippines relations were experiencing some difficulties in the 1950s, mainly because of Filipino domestic reasons, of the three foreign policy options open to Manila— namely, align with the United States, neutralism, or succumb to communism —Manila’s choice was to further strengthen collaboration with the United States.46 The United States has had a mutual defense treaty arrangement with the Philippines since 1952. The Philippines also became a member of SEATO. The communist threat to the Philippines had steadily decreased since 1950. By March 1957, the Huk was completely defeated. Both the Philippine Communist Party and its military arm, the Huk, were formally outlawed in 1957. From a peak of 10,000 well-organized armed men in 1950, the Huk had been reduced to about 500 scattered and disorganized individuals in 1958. The Philippine Communist Party then switched strategy to one of subverting the influential urban intelligentsia using high-appeal slogans such as “nationalism” and “colonialism” in its attempt to destroy the U.S.–Philippines alliance. Besides the urban educated, there was also the Chinese community, estimated at between 300,000 and 400,000. Full diplomatic relations with the Republic of China (Formosa/Taiwan) had kept communist influence to a minimum. However, the Chinese population, which had not been assimilated, was seen to be potential communist fodder. Manila was also concerned about the rise of communism in Indonesia, especially given the closeness of China and North Vietnam.47 But what was topmost in the minds of the indigenous Philippine elite was preventing the Chinese middle class/the indigenous Chinese minority from dominating the economy, not the threat of communism.48 Nick Cullather described 1950 to 1956 as the “golden age of U.S.–Philippines cooperation” although the interests of the United States and the Philippine elite became increasingly difficult to reconcile after 1953–1954. Manila defined its interests predominantly in economic terms, whereas Washington’s priority was strategic.

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Burma Burma (now Myanmar) achieved its independence from the British on January 4, 1948. The Burmese leadership shared a similar antipathy toward communism and a fear of China.49 Burma had a thousand-mile border with China, which Rangoon had to take into consideration in their foreign relations. But unlike Thailand, the Burmese leadership believed that a “neutral’” foreign policy could ensure the country’s independence from foreign influence and Chinese domination. The American embassy in Rangoon noted that Burma’s potential riches, small population, and access to the Indian Ocean offered great temptation to the Chinese communists. However, Beijing was unlikely to launch an armed attack on Burma in the foreseeable future, preferring political infiltration and economic penetration. According to John Badgley, Beijing had a long and unusual interest in Burma, and manipulated the Burmese Communist Party to a greater degree than in any other country. The communist danger would be very much greater if not for the schisms within the party that hampered its ability to effectively challenge the government.50 In the 1950s, the Burmese economy was in decline and Rangoon was considering trading its surplus rice with China and other communist countries. The minister for industries and later minister of the national economy, U Kyaw Nyein, warned that unless the United States provided Burma with the economic assistance it badly needed, Burma would gravitate into the Soviet orbit within five years.51 Half a year later, it was reported that “communist-bloc tactics of economic warfare . . . [were] steadily enveloping Burma in the communist vise, despite Burmese intentions.” The communist bloc aim was to remove Western influence and to sway Burma from being neutral to pro-communist by buying up Burma’s surplus rice and providing muchneeded economic assistance. During their visit to Rangoon in 1955, Bulganin and Khrushchev agreed to absorb all remaining unsold Burmese rice. Apparently, not all of that was bought for Russian consumption alone but was also intended for North Vietnam, which was then facing a rice shortage. The communist bloc also offered equipment and technicians to facilitate the Burmese development program.52 According to an April 1956 CIA assessment, Burma was a major communist target, and over the long run, there was the danger of a substantial increase in communist influence through economic penetration. The assessment also highlighted three other reasons why Burma was vulnerable to communist penetration: (1) the impact of communist propaganda on Burmese students and opposition groups, (2) Beijing’s ability to exert both diplomatic and military pressure on Rangoon, and (3) Prime Minister U Nu’s belief that he could “deal with the Bloc without losing his freedom of action.”53

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According to one Chinese source, during a meeting between Mao Zedong and Khrushchev at Zhongnanhai in 1958, Khrushchev reiterated his proposal54 that China, being more familiar with the situation in Asia and Southwest Asia, should concentrate on that region, whereas the Soviet Union would concentrate on Europe since it had a better understanding of European affairs. Mao, according to the Chinese, apparently objected to what, in his view, was a policy of divide and rule.55 However, the Yugoslav ambassador to the Soviet Union, Veljko Micunovic, recalled a 1958 conversation with Khrushchev when the latter told him that there was no coincidence that the Russians had taken the north and the Chinese the south of Asia.56 The recollection by Aleksandr Kaznacheev57 who served as a junior diplomat with the Soviet embassy in Rangoon from 1957 to 1959 (when he defected to the United States) offers a rare glimpse into the communist activities in Burma during those years. Kaznacheev revealed that until 1959 (when Soviet policy in Burma and the rest of Southeast Asia were undergoing significant changes), Moscow maintained a relatively low profile in Rangoon and was content to let Beijing take the lead. But the communist insurgency in Burma was undermining Soviet political efforts in the country as well as in other parts of Southeast Asia. In the assessment of the embassy, despite ten years of fighting, the Burmese communists did not have any chance of winning. But the Chinese, who had full control of the insurgents, wanted to keep the civil war going at the expense of Soviet interests. Moscow had been trying for three years to enlist the help of Beijing to persuade the Burmese communist insurgents to emerge from underground and compete politically as a legal organization, to no avail. According to Aleksandr Kaznacheev, a new period of Soviet policy began to emerge in 1958–1959 when the Soviet Union abandoned the earlier agreement with their Chinese counterparts on the division of interests. In his memoir, Kaznacheev described in some detail the activities of the Political Intelligence Group in Burma, the primary objective of which was “penetration and subversion of local regimes, direct and active participation in the struggle between different political parties.” The Political Intelligence Group transmitted all instructions and financial assistance to the Burmese communists, and also delivered all messages from them to Moscow. Since 1958, the Group was also assigned “the difficult and highly delicate task” of competing with the Chinese for influence and control over the Burmese communists. But despite intensifying their psychological warfare, such as undermining the anticommunist U Nu, penetration into the other foreign embassies in Rangoon, especially the American embassy, the Russians were not very successful in Burma. Although there was a clandestine channel of continuous contacts between the Soviet intelligence and the Burmese communists, it was the Chinese who had the ulti-

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mate control over the Burmese communists. According to Kaznacheev, “there was a mountain of facts to show that the Chinese communists had an extensive network of agents in Burma and supplied the Burmese communist insurgents with arms, money, and trained instructors. All major military actions were planned by Chinese.” In late 1958, Kaznacheev translated a Burmese document which revealed that the Burmese communists Thakin Than Tun, Thakin Soe went to China to receive instructions and returned to continue with the insurgency. The Chinese also harbored and provided for the Kachin leader Naw Seng and 1800 of his followers near the Kachin State border. In the assessment of the embassy (which was sent to Moscow in February 1959), “the days of the communist insurrections are numbered and only drastic measures can save the remnants of the valuable cadres from complete annihilation.” In mid-1959, The Soviet first secretary, Alexei Maksin, who was in close liaison with the Chinese, revealed that a “liberated region” within Burma near the China–Burma border might soon be formed as a base where the insurgents could gather and revitalize themselves and from which they could safely operate, and be supplied and directed. During this time, the embassy also discovered the existence of an alternative plan which was the establishment of a “free Burma” autonomous area under Chinese control in Yunnan. The Burmese communist insurgents could use this autonomous area as a base to await more favorable conditions to subvert Burma and they could also serve as guides, scouts, and interpreters in the event that Beijing undertook some military operations in Burma. On March 2, 1962, General Ne Win overthrew the U Nu government in a bloodless coup. The change of power did not alter Rangoon’s foreign policy in general and toward China in particular. There was, however, fear that the communists could exploit the ongoing ethnic insurgencies in the country to its advantage if the government was unable to manage the ethnic minority problem.58 The U.S. embassy in Rangoon noted that Ne Win was also afraid of the United States and suspicious of the both the CIA and Washington which explained why he kept the United States at arm’s length. According to the U.S. assessment, the strength of Rangoon’s position vis-à-vis Beijing lay in its nationalism, which is “well-developed, real and fervent” and in the continued weakness of the Burmese Communist Party. Should Beijing decide not to recognize Burma’s policy of neutrality, a serious insurgency situation could develop within a few years.59

Malaya Beginning in 1948, the British and Malayan forces were fighting a communist insurgency in the Malay Peninsula. Chin Peng, who was appointed secretary

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general of the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) in 1947, in his recent memoirs of the anticolonial war against the British,60 revealed that although the decision to launch the armed struggle was agreed upon on March 21, 1948, there remained some doubts and misgivings about whether the conditions in Malaya and Singapore were indeed ripe for its success. It was, according to Chin Peng, not the strategy per se that was being questioned but the timing of its introduction. Some of them felt that the war against the British would last two to three years, and others longer, while Chin Peng predicted that it would last at least ten years. But before the details of timing and implementation could be worked out, the Sungei Siput attacks on June 16, 1948, which were carried out independently by three communist comrades without the concurrence of the leadership, inadvertently launched the armed struggle before preparations were complete. From August–September 1951, the CPM leadership conducted a review of the armed struggle from late 1948 to 1951 and concluded that the military approach had been “utterly inappropriate,” but nevertheless remained confident that they could continue with guerrilla warfare. The October 1, 1951, resolution issued at the end of the meeting thus focused on political rather than military strategy. It was felt that excesses committed during the military struggle had jeopardized the close relationship with the people, particularly the middle class. But as Chin Peng revealed with the benefit of hindsight, “by neglecting to drive home military requirements in the resolution, we most assuredly lost the initiative on the battlefield at the precise moment the enemy was deeply concerned with what we might be planning to do next.” Chin Peng also confessed that at the time he did not realize the need to plan specific, spectacular attacks purely for their political impact in the colonial motherland. Thus, although U.S. intelligence noted that since the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu and the 1954 Geneva Conference, there was a marked increase of communist-inspired and directed activities in Singapore,61 Chin Peng revealed that any lesson they could have learned from that spectacular victory came too late. From about 1955 when the British were clearly winning the war against the communists in Malaya, the latter began to switch from terrorism to subversion in the schools and labor unions, particularly in Singapore. According to the official history of the CPM, in the 1950s, the party adopted the “open and legal form of struggle to mount mass actions on a large scale in Singapore.” The party also sent cadres to set up the People’s Action Party (PAP) jointly with Lee Kuan Yew. The MCP also mobilized the masses to support the PAP in the 1959 Singapore elections ensuring a landslide victory for the PAP.62 An American study noted that the British were so focused on antiguerrilla military action for the last seven years that they were ill-prepared to respond to the “alarming inroads which communist subversion has made in the schools, trade unions, press, and political parties of Singapore and, to a lesser extent, the Federation of Malaya.”63

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The Federation of Malaya achieved independence on August 31, 1957. By 1958, the CPM leadership had completed a revision of its battlefield strategy and concluded that in order to survive and to continue the military struggle they had to direct future military activities from bases outside Peninsular Malaya. The communist pressure on Malaya was clearly easing. Since early 1958, Kuala Lumpur could afford to clandestinely (against the terms of the 1954 Geneva Agreements) give aid to South Vietnam. When the Malayan Emergency officially ended in July 1960, Prime Minister Tungku Abdul Rahman secretly sent all the arms and equipment that had been used to fight the communists to Ngo Dinh Diem. In his words, “[W]e both faced a common enemy, though we were miles apart in our ways of life.”64 Lee Kuan Yew, after coming to power in 1959, turned against the communists. Lee Kuan Yew has consistently maintained that American intervention in Vietnam helped save the anticommunist Southeast Asian states from the clutches of communism. According to Chin Peng, in their review of the 1959 election results, the CPM leadership predicted that Lee Kuan Yew would eventually move against the communists to consolidate his power. They appraised their cadres in Singapore of this analysis but could do little else. Meanwhile, the CPM was preoccupied with the complicated process of winding down the armed struggle in Malaya.65 The official history of the CPM revealed that as a consequence of the “right-opportunist line” of 1954, the party lacked a comprehensive and longterm view, and placed too much focus on the open and legal struggle. For example, it downgraded the role of secret organizations. As a result, the communists suffered seriously in the face of full scale suppression by the authorities. Nevertheless, they did preserve a “well-tempered revolutionary armed force and quite an extensive guerrilla base area in the border region.”66 In his account, Chin Peng describes the close cooperation of Siamese, Laos, Vietnamese, and Chinese communist parties, which made it possible for him to make the hazardous journey to Beijing, of his discussions with Ho Chi Minh, Le Duan, and Le Duc Tho in Hanoi, and of the Sino–Soviet schism and how that affected the Southeast Asian communist parties. He recalled that the CPM’s presence in Hanoi on May Day 1961 had to be kept inconspicuous because Hanoi had a vested interest in avoiding any form of alignment in the Sino–Soviet conflict, and thus “to have had a line-up of Chinese guests on the official May Day viewing dais or at some other prominent location—albeit Chinese from Malaya—would certainly have signaled the wrong message and endangered Hanoi’s cultivated neutrality.”67 In Beijing, among other Chinese leaders, he met Deng Xiaoping in July 1961 who “knew the minds and plans of the Burmese, Siamese, Lao, Cambodia and Indonesian comrades who all maintained important training facilities in China at this time.” Chin Peng also

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revealed that the CPM actually reversed their 1959 decision to abandon armed struggle “to accommodate Beijing and Hanoi and their Indochina aspiration.” The Chinese also began funding the CPM from 1961 (and not earlier as claimed by the Western media). As Chin Peng said, “[T]he nub of our position was the success or failure for the CPM’s return to armed struggle rested on the degree of assistance Beijing was willing to extend.”68 From the perspective of Chin Peng in the late 1950s and early 1960s, his personal assessment was of the view that South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos would definitely become communist. But he was decidedly less confident about Thailand. In fact, he believed that “a communist Siam was little more than a pipe dream.” Chin Peng hoped in vain for a neutral Siamese government to come to power, whether military or civilian. As for Malaysia, he was less optimistic than some of his CPM colleagues. He thought that an eight- to ten-year time frame might be more realistic and even that he was doubtful. The CPM had refrained from asking Beijing for arms and ammunition because they knew that the delivery of such equipment to Malaya would be a formidable, if not impossible task. As he said, “we desperately needed a common border with a national territory controlled by a fraternal party—a requirement even the liberation of the three Indochinese territories would fail to meet.” Although the British officially won the military fight against the communists in the Federation of Malaya with the declaration of the end of the Emergency in July 1960, the communist threat was still not completely eradicated. According to the CPM official account, in September 1961, at the eleventh enlarged plenary session of the Central Committee, the leadership corrected the “right-opportunist line” and reaffirmed the correct line of carrying the armed struggle through to the end. A new policy was put in place. A number of revolutionary mass organizations were formed and base areas and guerrilla zones were rapidly revived and gradually consolidated.69 Earl G. Drake who arrived in Kuala Lumpur at the end of 1961 as first secretary of the Canadian High Commission recalled that when he arrived, the military fight had been largely won, although he once saw the smoke from a “communist terrorist” campfire in the jungle near the Thai border. The real struggle, he noted, became a “political and economic one to convince all races that they had chosen a system that would enable them to live in prosperity and peace.”70

Cambodia Both Cambodia and Laos effectively achieved their independence in 1954. With regards to Cambodia, there was no Cambodian Communist Party between 1945 and 1953, like the ones in Indonesia, Vietnam, or the Philippines

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and there was no clear communist alternative to Sihanouk for many more years. It is therefore instructive to begin with Le Duan’s fourteen-point plan drawn up in late 1955 and early 1956 and which was adopted by the Nam Bo Committee.71 The setbacks suffered by the communist cadres in the South and their increasingly low morale led Le Duan to present this plan recommending a more aggressive and militant approach to complement the political struggle in the South. The plan proposed that military action should be used in support of other activities in the South, the creation of support bases and battalions, and the consolidation of military organizations in the interzone areas. Cambodia was highlighted as strategically important and Le Duan recommended that budgetary assistance be increased and senior cadres be posted to Cambodia, the creation of a support base to aid activities in Cambodia and the consolidation of the leading communist organizations there. Although the North Vietnamese leadership did not approve the plan (when they met to discuss it some time in late March/early April 1956), because of a complex range of reasons that we need not go into here, it was not because they did not consider Cambodia strategically significant. Rather, at this stage, Hanoi assessed that Sihanouk’s policy of neutrality, Phnom Penh’s compliance with the 1954 Geneva Agreements, its refusal to join any military alliance, and the establishment of friendly relations between China and Cambodia were all helpful to the enforcement of the Geneva Agreements. According to U.S. assessments in 1963, there was no concrete indication of any intensification of Vietnamese communist activities in Cambodia since 1956.72 While Sihanouk was wary of communist subversion of his country, it would appear that he was more concerned with the perceived threats emanating from Thailand and South Vietnam. It was the latter more than the former threat that led Sihanouk to cajole the Western powers, particularly the United States, to guarantee the neutrality and integrity of Cambodia. Indeed, he was of the view that the Chinese had been behaving cooperatively with Cambodia and he hoped that Beijing would maintain this attitude if he remained neutral. He even threatened to resort to Chinese assistance if the United States failed to check Thai and South Vietnamese territorial aggression against Cambodia.73 Sihanouk believed that all of Southeast Asia was destined to become communist but he believed that he could manage Phnom Penh’s relations with China so that when Cambodia became communist, it would “happen without breakage.”74 In Hanoi’s attempt to cultivate Sihanouk, the Vietnamese communists encouraged their Cambodian counterparts to exercise restraint. According to David P. Chandler, during this time Saloth Sar (Pol Pot) “was working with fellow members of the Indochina Communist Party . . . to protect its Cambodian

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leaders Tou Samouth and Sieu Heng and to lay the groundwork, when the time was ripe and permission came from Vietnam, for a larger and better organized Cambodian Communist Party.”75 At this point, it is perhaps worth noting that on or around July 20, 1962, Tou Samouth (who was close to the Vietnamese communists) was assassinated and (Pol Pot) became the acting secretary general of the party. Pol Pot was subsequently confirmed as secretary general during the Third Congress of the Khmer People’s Revolutionary Party on February 20–21, 1963. This development would later have significant impact on Vietnamese communists’ relations with the Khmer Rouge as well as Sino– Vietnamese relations.76

Thailand For reasons that would be clear later, we shall now consider Thailand, which is the only Southeast Asian state that was never colonized before we turn to Laos. According to an internal history of the Communist Party of Thailand,77 the party learned one important lesson from the communist victory in China in 1949, which was that “a people’s government can only take power through armed struggle.” An internal debate over whether the party should prepare to launch an armed struggle ensued, which was not settled in favor of armed struggle until the pivotal Third Congress in September 1961. At that congress, Prasoet Sapsunthon, who had been very critical of the armed struggle line and who had spearheaded the “united front” or “”direct” line of peaceful struggle for democracy, was expelled from the party. The “internal history” noted that the resolution adopted at the Second Congress (early 1952), which “correctly” called for the mobilization of the peasants, who were the foundation for the armed struggle, was not adhered to at the beginning and middle period after the Second Congress. It was only toward the end that “we learnt lessons, returned to the Second Congress line, and became rather confident about armed struggle.” The Thai communists saw the revolution in their country as “one part of the world revolution of the working class” and “the working class must support one another.” As the “internal history” stated, “we strive for support from other countries, at the same time we carry out our own international duty to assist the revolutionary struggles of other countries.” But while international support and assistance was desirable and useful, the Communist Party of Thailand recognized that revolutions could not be exported or imported, as they arose from specific conditions within individual countries. External assistance was provided by Beijing, Hanoi, and the Pathet Lao and Khmer Rouge. The radio station, Voice of the People of Thailand, was located in Chinese territory. Besides

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China, the Vietnamese communists also provided arms and munitions as well as training to their Thai counterparts. The Thirty-fifth Pathet Lao/Ninety-fifth North Vietnamese Army Command was tasked to facilitate the movement of Thai communist cadres to Laos and North Vietnam for training.78 Thailand clearly saw itself as the next domino. Prime Minister Phibun Songkhram told Secretary of State John Foster Dulles that the Vietnamese communists in the two northern Laotian provinces of San Neua and Phongsaly were “a spearhead aimed at the rest of mainland Southeast Asia.”79 Because of its apprehension of communist subversion, Bangkok strongly supported the formation of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). The inaugural meeting of SEATO (February 23–25, 1955) was held in Bangkok. The U.S. embassy in Thailand in a 1955 dispatch noted that it was difficult to ascertain the extent of communist subversive activity in Thailand. A largescale subversion, which was expected to occur after the Vietnamese communists’ success against the French, did not take place. The report, however, highlighted five principal sources of potential danger: (1) the Chinese minority throughout Thailand, (2) the Vietnamese communists in northeast Thailand, (3) Infiltration from China, including the Thai Nationality Autonomous area in Yunnan, (4) Communist elements in the southern border of Thailand supported by communists in Malaya, and (5) disaffected Thai elements both in Thailand and abroad. The dispatch also added that the Thai leadership was aware of the potential communist threat. While it had the will to take preventive action, it very much needed American support and guidance.80 The Americans were aware that soon after the Bandung Conference, some among the Thai leadership were making discreet overtures toward Beijing. General Carlos P. Romulo told Foster Dulles that he was greatly disturbed over Zhou Enlai’s effect on the Thai foreign minister, Prince Wan, during the Bandung Conference, who he claimed had been completely beguiled by Zhou.81 The U.S. embassy was of the view that Thai actions were a manifestation of the “Thai political tradition of attempting, as a small nation, to maintain its independence by keeping in line with apparent trends in the international pattern of power.”82 Rockwood H. Foster (acting officer in charge of Thai and Malayan Affairs) wrote in a June 22, 1955 letter to the U.S. ambassador to Thailand: The Thai are scared of the Chinese and dislike them thoroughly, but as long as Burma, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam give Thailand as little protection as they do now, the Thai, having flyspecked the Manila Pact commitments, realise that diplomatic realities must prevail over abstract principles. I am afraid the Thai have decided that we cannot now be entirely trusted to defend them as we were at the time of Korea.83

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American assessments indicated that in the event of a direct communist attack on Laos, Cambodia or South Vietnam, Bangkok would participate in any military countermeasures only if assured of prompt commitment of U.S. forces to the region. If not, the Thai would almost certainly seek an accommodation with the communist bloc. If communist control of the mainland Southeast Asian countries were achieved through subversion, then Thailand would move toward a neutralist position.84 After the 1957 military coup, however, Sarit Thanarat—although he was unsure of American resolve to combat communism in Southeast Asia—believed that closer ties with Washington was in the best interest of Thailand.85 Thanat Khoman (Thai ambassador to the United States who subsequently became foreign minister from 1959 to 1971) remarked that the three million Chinese in Thailand “would turn to the communists at the drop of a hat if the Chinese communists ever made any attack on Thailand.”86 By 1961, Thailand had become the “unofficial and disguised base of operations for the United States in Southeast Asia.”87 At the same time, Bangkok was also very concerned by what it perceived to be the inefficacy of SEATO, particularly when the organization failed to take any action during the Laotian crisis of 1961. The Thai leadership had serious misgivings about the international conference on Laos. They saw cease-fires and conferences as devices that the communists could exploit to take over Laos and South Vietnam followed by Thailand.88 A 1963 CIA report noted an increase in communist activities alongside the Muslim irredentist movement at the Thai–Malayan border. The Parti Komunis Indonesia (PKI) apparently supported the communists and Muslim groups both militarily and financially.89A number of American assessments also noted that the Thai army was incapable of dealing effectively with communist-supported insurrections or guerrilla movements.90 Similar to Nick Cullather’s for the Philippines, Daniel Fineman’s study of U.S.–Thai relations cited earlier showed that while Washington’s priority was strategic, U.S.–Thai relations from the perspective of the Thais was more complex than simply the fear of communism. Inextricably connected with anticommunism91 were domestic political rivalries, interests, and concerns, which Fineman argued were the most important factors shaping U.S.–Thai relationship from the Thai perspective.

Laos Laos is the appropriate Southeast Asian country to end this survey. As Arne Kislenko noted the fragility of the Northeast part of Thailand and its proximity to the crisis in Laos became a major concern for both Bangkok and Washington.92 In January 1961, it was Laos, rather than South Vietnam, that was considered to be the pivotal country. At their final meeting, Eisenhower told

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President-designate Kennedy that Laos was the key to the entire area of Southeast Asia, and permitting Laos to fall would mean writing off the whole region.93 Time magazine described Laos as “rich plum from Asia’s heartland,” which if it fell to communism would infect Cambodia, Burma, Thailand, and South Vietnam. If that happened, India would be “outflanked,” Indonesia would be “easy plucking,” and Malaya and Singapore would become “easy stepping-stones for communist expansion to the ultimate peril of Australia and New Zealand.”94 As Thomas J. Schoenbaum observed, it was Laos, not South Vietnam, that gave birth to the domino theory.95 Indeed, in 1960 and particularly from the Kong Lae coup on August 9, 1960 until the summer of 1962, developments in Laos overshadowed the armed struggle in South Vietnam (which was underway by the end of 1959). Unlike Cambodia, Laos did not have a strong and effective leader like Sihanouk. This was compounded by the fact that, while Cambodia did not have an effective communist party, in Laos there was the Pathet Lao, which in 1954 controlled the two provinces of Sam Neau and Phong Saly, adjacent to North Vietnam. That the Laotian communists (Pathet Lao) and their Vietnamese counterparts had extremely close ties was already common knowledge in those days. Langer and Zasloff in 1970 were able to establish that the North Vietnamese were involved in the fighting in Laos during the summer of 1959. Their principal source of information was an intelligence officer of the rank of captain in the G-2 section of the Royal Laotian Armed Forces whom they interviewed over an eight-month period.96 A North Vietnamese economic cadre’s notebook also revealed that in May 1959, which coincided with Hanoi’s announcement to resume armed struggle and the construction of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, Hanoi began to pay greater attention to the revolutionary movement in Laos.97 In 1980, the North Vietnamese finally admitted their involvement. They revealed that in 1959, they and the Pathet Lao agreed to the formation of a delegation of Vietnamese military specialists to work alongside the Pathet Lao forces. In September 1959, Group 959 was thus formed. Its mission was to serve as specialists for the Pathet Lao forces, organize the logistics and the supply of Vietnamese material, and to directly command the Vietnamese volunteer units operating in Sam Neua, Xieng Khouang, and Vientiane. Group 959 remained active until 1973.98 This was further confirmed by the account by Marek Thee (the Polish representative on the International Supervisory and Control Commission of his three-day visit to Hanoi on June 9–11, 1961). From Thee’s recollections, we have an idea of Hanoi’s perception of the strategic importance of Laos to North Vietnam.99 Thee had discussions with a number of North Vietnamese Foreign Ministry officials specializing in Laotian affairs and most notably with Pham

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Hung, the acting prime minister and politburo member. According to Pham Hung, Laos and Vietnam were bound together by fate. The North Vietnamese saw developments in Laos within the context of the developments in South Vietnam. To them, Indochina formed a unified arena. In their assessment, the situation was fluid and the struggle was expected to be protracted. Referring to the ongoing fighting between the North Vietnamese–Pathet Lao forces and the forces of the royal Laotian government—the battle of Ban Padong (May to early June 1961), Hung said that it was not simply one of strategic planning but historical inevitability. From the meetings, Thee also learned that Hanoi had very close contacts with the Pathet Lao, that strategic planning was a joint enterprise, and the North Vietnamese were involved in giving military support and economic and technical assistance, as well as political counsel. There was an interdepartmental body in constant touch with Laos. Beginning in 1961, Hoang Van Hoan was in charge of the secret CP38 Committee responsible for directing operations in Laos (and Cambodia).100 The North Vietnamese never wanted an agreement on Laos on the first place but was compelled by the Russians and the Chinese to accept the neutrality of Laos.101 As such, they never withdrew their forces from Laos. After the Geneva Conference on Laos in July 1962, the focus of attention shifted back to South Vietnam. Meanwhile, the fighting in Laos variously described as the “furtive war,” “secret war,” and “war in the shadow of Vietnam” persisted until 1975.

Conclusion From the above account, we can reach three conclusions for the period between 1945 and 1962. First, what was known then and what we now know about the communist activities and their transnational ambitions during the period under consideration lend credence to the plausibility of the domino theory. Second, the non-communist Southeast Asian governments believed in the communist threat and the domino theory, although the degree to which they perceived the immediacy of the threat varied from government to government. Here is where American interests and the interests of the Southeast Asian governments did not always coincide. Third, Washington was cognizant of local conditions in the various Southeast Asian countries. American officials were aware of the perceptions and fears, and the domestic political interests of most Southeast Asian leaders at the time. American officials and decision makers were on the whole sensitive to the fact that Southeast Asia “did not represent a unified area” and that “courses of action must generally be determined in the light of varying country conditions.”102 What is perhaps more contentious is

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the forms in which the “courses of action” took, most notably with regard to South Vietnam. But that is a question for future research.

Notes 1. Robert Jervis and Jack Snyder, eds., Dominoes and Bandwagons: Strategic Beliefs and Great Power Competition in the Eurasian Rimland (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 3. 2. Jerome Slater, “Dominos in Central America: Will They Fall? Does It Matter?” International Security 12, no. 2 (Fall 1987), 105–34. 3. J. Justin Gustainis, American Rhetoric and the Vietnam War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993), 4. 4. See, for example, Stephen Morris, “Fatal Flaws in General’s Strategy,” The Australian,August 2, 2002; William Pfaff, “The ‘Clash of Civilisations’ Is for History’s Dustbin,” International Herald Tribune, October 18, 2001; Denis Warner, “Dominoes: America Was Right to Wage the Vietnam War,” International Herald Tribune, April 21, 2000; “America Must Exorcise Vietnam’s Ghost,” Asian Wall Street Journal, May 27, 1997. 5. See Robert S. McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (New York: Random House, 1995). 6. Slater, “Dominos in Central America,” 130. 7. Gustainis, American Rhetoric and the Vietnam War, 17. 8. Robert Jervis, “Domino Beliefs and Strategic Behaviour,” in Jervis and Synder, Dominoes and Bandwagons, 39, 41. 9. Jack Synder, “Introduction,” in Jervis and Synder, eds., Dominoes and Bandwagons, 4, 17, notes 8 and 9. 10. Robert J. McMahon, “What Difference Did It Make? Assessing the Vietnam War’s Impact on Southeast Asia,” in Lloyd C. Gardiner and Ted Gittinger, eds., International Perspectives on Vietnam (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 2000), chapter 10. 11. “The Row of Dominoes,” Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Press Conference, April 7, 1954, available at http://www.vietnamwar.net/Eisenhower-2.htm. 12. Cited in Robert J. McMahon, “The United States and Southeast Asia in an Era of Decolonisation, 1945–1965,” in Marc Frey, Ronald W. Pruessen, and Tan Tai Yong, eds., The Transformation of Southeast Asia: International Perspectives on Decolonisation (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2003), 214, 324, n. 1. 13. The Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History of United States Decisionmaking on Vietnam, vol. 1, The Senator Gravel Edition (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), 82–83. 14. Richard Nixon, No More Vietnams (New York: Avon Books, 1985), 29. 15. Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (Boston: Little Brown, 1982), 82. 16. Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1979), 227–28. 17. Ibid., 87. 18. Doris Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York: Harper and Row, 1976), 254–56.

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19. Clark M. Clifford, “A Vietnam Reappraisal: The Personal History of One Man’s View and How It Evolved,” Foreign Affairs 47, no. 4 (July 1969), 604–5. 20. See W.W. Rostow, The Diffusion of Power: An Essay in Recent History (New York: Macmillan, 1972), sections on Vietnam; Laurence E. Grinter, “How They Lost: Doctrines, Strategies and Outcomes of the Vietnam War,” Asian Survey 15, no. 12 (December 1975), 1114–32. 21. Rostow, The Diffusion of Power, 283. 22. See McMahon, “The United States and Southeast Asia in an Era of Decolonisation.” See also his The Limits of Empire: The United States and Southeast Asia Since World War II (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983). 23. McMahon, Limits of Empire, 225. 24. John Lewis Gaddis, “New Conceptual Approaches to the Study of American Foreign Relations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives,” Diplomatic History 14, no. 3 (Summer 1990), 405–32. 25. See particularly the publications of the Cold War International History Project (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars) and the works of Chen Jian, Ilya Gaiduk, and Odd Arne Westad. 26. Robert J. McMahon, “The Cold War in Asia: The Elusive Synthesis,” in Michael J. Hogan, ed., America in the World: The Historiography of American Foreign Relations since 1941 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 501–35; Richard Mason, “Origins of the Cold War in Southeast Asia: A Survey of Post-revisionist Interpretations” (paper presented at the Conference on Southeast Asian Historiography since 1945, July 30–August 1, 1999, Penang, Malaysia). 27. See Larisa Efimova, “Towards the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between the USSR and the Republic of Indonesia, 1947–48,” Indonesia and the Malay World 26, no. 76 (1998); “New Evidence on the Establishment of Soviet–Indonesian Diplomatic Relations (1949–53),” Indonesia and the Malay World 29, no. 85 (2001); “Who Gave Instructions to the Indonesian Communist Leader Musso in 1948?” Indonesia and the Malay World 31, no. 90 (July 2003); and “Stalin and the Revival of the Communist Party of Indonesia,” Cold War History 5, no. 1 (February 2005). 28. The Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series on Southeast Asia (including Vietnam and Laos, which are published in two other separate series) under the Johnson administration have all been published. The most recent on Indonesia, Philippines, and Malaysia/Singapore was published in 2001, a year after the volume on Thailand, Cambodia, and SEATO (1964–1968) was published in September 2000. For a discussion of the FRUS series, see the review essay by Stephen G. Rabe in Diplomatic History 23, no. 3 (Summer 1999), 539–52. 29. Milton Osborne, Exploring Southeast Asia (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2002), 156. See also Osborne, Southeast Asia: An Introductory History (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1995). 30. Larisa M. Efimova, “Stalin and the Revival of the Communist Party of Indonesia,” Cold War History 5, no. 1 (February 2005). See also L.M. Efimova, “Towards the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between the USSR and the Republic of Indonesia, 1947–47,” Indonesia and the Malay World 26, no. 76 (1998), 184–94; and Efimova, “New Evidence of the Establishment of Soviet–Indonesian Diplomatic Relations (1949–53),” Indonesia and the Malay World 29, no. 85 (2001), 215–33.

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31. Telegram from the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, Djakarta, January 20, 1955, in FRUS, 1955–1957 (Southeast Asia), 131–32. 32. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE 65-55), Washington, DC, March 1, 1955, in FRUS, 1955–1957 (Southeast Asia), 22: 140–41; National Security Council Report (NCS 5518), Washington, May 3, 1955 in FRUS, 1955–1957 (Southeast Asia), 22: 153–57; National Intelligence Estimate (NIE 65-56), Washington, DC, August 7, 1956, in FRUS, 1955–1957 (Southeast Asia), 22: 290–91. 33. Message from the Department of State to the Ambassador in Indonesia (Allison), Washington, DC, August 8, 1957, in FRUS, 1955–1957 (Southeast Asia), 22: 406–7; National Intelligence Estimate (NIE 65-57), Washington, DC, August 27, 1957, in FRUS, 1955–1957 (Southeast Asia), 22: 429–31. 34. Telegram from the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, Djakarta, August 30, 1957, in FRUS, 1955–1957 (Southeast Asia), 22: 432–34. 35. Telegram from the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, Djakarta, March 19, 1958 and March 21, 1958, in FRUS, 1958–1960 (Indonesia), 17: 74–81, 83–86; Memorandum from Director of Central Intelligence Dulles to President Eisenhower, Washington, April 17, 1958 in FRUS, 1958–1960 (Indonesia), 17: 114–16. For details of Sino–Soviet Bloc assistance to Indonesia, see Memorandum of Information, Washington, DC, March 28, 1958, in FRUS, 1958–1960 (Indonesia), 17: 89–90. 36. Telegram from the Embassy in Indonesia to the Department of State, Djakarta, April 20, 1959, in FRUS, 1958–1960, 17: 374–75. 37. Brief prepared in the Defence Intelligence Agency, Washington, DC, March 7, 1961, in FRUS, 1961–1963 (Southeast Asia), 23: 318–19. 38. Memorandum of Conversation, Washington, DC, April 24, 1961, in FRUS, 1961–1963 (Southeast Asia), 23: 382–90. 39. R.B. Smith, An International History of the Vietnam War, vol. 2: The Struggle for South-East Asia, 1961–65 (London: Macmillan, 1985), 136. 40. “How Armed Struggle Began in South Vietnam,” Vietnam Courier, no. 22 (March 1974), pp. 19–24. 41. Wilfred Burchett, My Visit to the Zones of South Vietnam (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1966), 17. For a more detailed account of the situation in South Vietnam during this period, see Carlyle Thayer, War by Other Means: National Liberation and Revolution in Vietnam 1954–60 (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1989), chapter 7. 42. Telegram from the Embassy in the Philippines to the Department of State, Manila, August 12, 1955, in FRUS, 1955–1957 (Southeast Asia), 22: 600–602. 43. Letter from President Magsaysay to Secretary of State Dulles, Manila, March 15, 1956, in FRUS, 1955–1957 (Southeast Asia), 22: 640–42. 44. Telegram from the Secretary of State to the Department of State, Taipei, March 16, 1956, in FRUS, 1955–1957 (Southeast Asia), 22: 642–43. 45. Memorandum from President Kennedy to his Special Assistant for National Affairs (Bundy), Washington, DC, July 10, 1961, in FRUS, 1961–1963 (Southeast Asia), 23: 769. 46. Telegram from the Embassy in the Philippines to the Department of State, Manila, August 27, 1956, in FRUS, 1955–1957 (Southeast Asia), 22: 676–79. 47. NSC Policy Statement, NSC 5813/1, June 4, 1958, in Nick Cullather, ed., Managing Nationalism: United States National Security Council Documents on the Philippines 1953–1960 (Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1992), 137–38.

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48. See Nick Cullather, Illusions of Influence: The Political Economy of United States–Philippines Relations, 1942–1960 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994). 49. Telegram from the Embassy in Burma to the Department of State, Rangoon, March 30, 1957 in FRUS, 1955–1957, 22: 99–101. 50. John Badgley, “Burmese Communist Schisms,” in John Wilson Lewis, ed., Peasant Rebellion and Communist Revolution in Asia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1974), 151–68. 51. Telegram from the Embassy in Burma to the Department of State, Rangoon, June 23, 1955, in FRUS, 1955–1957 (Southeast Asia), 22: 12–13. 52. Memorandum from the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs (Robertson) to the Secretary of State, Washington, DC, February 9, 1956, in FRUS, 1955–1957 (Southeast Asia), 22: 36–40. 53. National Intelligence Estimate 61–56 (Probable Developments in Burma), Washington, DC, April 10, 1956, in FRUS, 1955–1957 (Southeast Asia), 22: 57–59. 54. Khrushchev first proposed this idea in 1957. See Strobe Talbot, trans. and ed., Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament (London: Andre Deutch, 1974), 254–55. 55. Quan Yanchi, Mao Zedong Yu Khruschev: 1957–1959 Zhongsu Guanxi Jishi (Jiling Remin Chubanshe, 1990), 123–33. 56. Veljko Micunovic, Moscow Diary (London: Chatto and Windus, 1980), 422. 57. Aleksandr Kaznacheev, Inside a Soviet Embassy: Experiences of a Russian Diplomat in Burma (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1962), 85, 138–48, 173–76, 188–90, 213–18. 58. Memorandum from Acting Secretary of State Ball to President Kennedy, Washington, DC, May 4, 1963, in FRUS, 1961–1963 (Southeast Asia), 23: 118–20. 59. Draft Memorandum from the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs (Berger) to the Assistant Secretary of State (Bundy), Washington, DC, December 13, 1967, in FRUS, 1964–1968 (Mainland Southeast Asia), vol. 27; Regional Affairs (on-line version). 60. Chin Peng, My Side of History (Singapore: Media Masters, 2003). 61. Memorandum from the Deputy Director for Plans of the Central Intelligence Agency (Wisner) to the President’s Special Assistant (Rockefeller), Washington, DC, June 1, 1955 in FRUS, 1955–1957 (Southeast Asia), 22: 735–36. 62. Voice of Malayan Revolution, June 27, 1981, Part 5; Chin Peng, My Side of History, 409. 63. Staff Study Prepared by an Interdepartmental Committee for the Operations Coordinating Board, Washington, DC, December 14, 1955, in FRUS, 1955–1957 (Southeast Asia), 22: 744–54. 64. Tengku Abdul Rahman Putra, Looking Back: The Historic Years of Malaya and Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur: Pustaka Antara, 1977), 140–42. 65. Chin Peng, My Side of History, 409. 66. Voice of Malayan Revolution, June 27, 1981, part 5. 67. Chin Peng, My Side of History, 420–21. See also chapters 25 and 26. 68. Ibid., 428–29, 434, 455. 69. Voice of Malayan Revolution, June 27, 1981, part 5. 70. Earl G. Drake, A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants: Memoirs of a Prairie Diplomat (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 64. 71. U.S. Department of State, Working Paper on North Vietnam’s Role in the South

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(May 27, 1968), Appendices, Item 19 (Translation of a document found on the person of a political officer with communist forces in Zone 9 of the Western Interzone on 27 November 1956), Item 31 (An intelligence report from an agent of the GVN who had contact with Vietnamese Communist Party members in Saigon are in 1956), and Item 204 (Document purportedly issued probably in late spring 1956 by Lao Dong Party Central Committee for guidance of senior cadres in GVN zone). 72. Memorandum from the Deputy Assistant of State for Far Eastern Affairs (Rice) to the Deputy Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (Johnson), Washington, DC, April 10, 1963, in FRUS, 1961–1963 (Southeast Asia), 23: 231–33. 73. This comes across in many of the reports contained in FRUS, 1961–1963 (Southeast Asia), vol. 23. See also Sihanouk’s conversations with Malcolm MacDonald in FO 371/152692, DU 1015/107, August 20, 1960, from Saigon to Foreign Office; FO 371/152692, DU 1015/108, August 25, 1960, from Commonwealth Relation Office (CRO) to Foreign Office (Secret); FO 371/166667, DU 1022/5, June 6, 1962, Notes on Conversation with Prince Sihanouk about Cambodia’s Attitude to PresentDay South East Asian Problems. 74. Quoted in Henry Kamm, “A Broken Country,” New York Times Magazine, September 19, 1987, 96, cited in Jervis and Snyder, Dominoes and Bandwagons, 40. 75. David P. Chandler, Brother Number One: A Political Biography of Pol Pot (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1992), 55. 76. The circumstances surrounding Tou Sanouth’s death remain unclear. See Ben Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power (London: Verso, 1985), 197–98, 241; Chandler, Brother Number One, 63–64, 206; Serge Thion, Watching Cambodia: Ten Paths to Enter the Cambodian Tangle (Bangkok: White Lotus, 1993), Appendix 3, “About Tou Samouth,” 222–24. 77. “An Internal History of the Communist Party of Thailand” (first drafted in 1974, updated in 1978) (translated from Thai by Chris Baker), Journal of Contemporary Asia 33, no. 4 (2003), 510–41. 78. M. Ladd Thomas, “Communist Insurgency in Thailand: Factors Contributing to Its Decline,” Asian Affairs 13, no. 1 (Spring 1986), 17–26. 79. Memorandum of a Conversation, Department of State, Washington, DC, May 3, 1955, in FRUS, 1955–1957 (Southeast Asia), 22: 821–22. 80. Dispatch from the Embassy in Thailand to the Department of State, Bangkok, April 21, 1955, in FRUS, 1955–1957 (Southeast Asia), 22: 816–20. 81. Memorandum of a Conversation, Department of State, Washington, DC, May 24, 1955, in FRUS, 1955–1957 (East Asian Security; Cambodia; Laos), 21: 103–5. For a first-person account of Bangkok’s secret contact with Beijing after the Bandung Conference, see Sirin Phathanothai, The Dragon’s Pearl (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994). 82. Dispatch from the Embassy in Thailand to the Department of State, Bangkok, May 23, 1956, in FRUS, 1955–1957 (Southeast Asia), 22: 875–81. 83. Acting Officer in Charge of Thai and Malayan Affairs (Foster) to the Ambassador in Thailand (Peurifoy), Washington, DC, June 22, 1955, in FRUS, 1955–1957, 22: 825–27. 84. National Intelligence Estimate 62-57 (Probable Developments in Thailand), Washington, DC, June 18, 1957 in FRUS, 1955–1957 (Southeast Asia), 22: 925–26.

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85. See Daniel Fineman, A Special Relationship: The United States and Military Government in Thailand, 1947–1958 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997). 86. Telegram from the Commander in Chief, Pacific’s Political Adviser (Steeves) to the Department of State, Pearl Harbor, October 22, 1958, FRUS, 1958–1960 (South and Southeast Asia), 15: 1048–49. 87. Memorandum from the Ambassador to Thailand (Young) to the President’s Military Representative (Taylor), October 27, 1961 in FRUS, 1961–1963 (Southeast Asia), 23: 28–31. 88. Memorandum of Conversation (President Eisenhower, Ambassador Visutr Arthayukti and Ambassador Kenneth T. Young, Jr.), Washington, DC, April 6, 1961 in FRUS, 1961–1963 (Southeast Asia), 23: 846–48. 89. Central Intelligence Agency Information Report on Security Situation in Thailand as of March 23, 1963, Washington, DC, March 25, 1963, in FRUS, 1961–1963 (Southeast Asia), 23: 987–90. 90. For example, see Ambassador in Thailand (Bishop) to the Under Secretary of State (Herter), Bangkok, December 13, 1957 in FRUS, 1955–1957 (Southeast Asia), 22: 944–46. 91. See also, Arne Kislenko, “A Not So Silent Partner: Thailand’s Role in Covert Operations, Counter-Insurgency, and the Wars in Indochina,” Journal of Conflict Studies 26 (Summer 2004), 65–96. 92. Ibid., 68. 93. See Clark M. Clifford, “A Vietnam Reappraisal: The Personal History of One Man’s View and How It Evolved,” Foreign Affairs 47, no. 4 (July 1969). Clark M. Clifford was the note-taker during this meeting. 94. Time (March 31, 1961), cited by Thomas J. Schoenbaum, Waging Peace and War: Dean Rusk in the Truman, Kennedy and Johnson Years (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 385. 95. Schoenbaum, Waging Peace and War, 385. 96. Paul F. Langer and Joseph J. Zasloff, North Vietnam and the Pathet Lao: Partners in the Struggle for Laos (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), 67–70, 236. 97. Joseph J. Zasloff, The Pathet Lao: Leadership and Organisation (Toronto: Lexington, 1973), 15. 98. Vietnam: The Anti-U.S. Resistance War for National Salvation, 1954–1975— Military Events (Hanoi, printing completed on May 30, 1980) (Springfield, VA: Joint Publications Research Service, June 3, 1982), 33–34. 99. Marek Thee, Notes of a Witness: Laos and the Second IndoChina War (New York: Random House, 1973), chapter 9. 100. Hoang Van Hoan, A Drop in the Ocean (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1988), 382. 101. For an account of the 1961 Geneva Conference on Laos from the perspective of the communist side, see Ang Cheng Guan, Vietnamese Communists’ Relations with China and the Second Indochina Conflict, 1956–1962 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1997). 102. See for example, National Security Council Report (NSC 5612/1), Washington, DC, September 5, 1956, in FRUS, 1955–1957 (East Asia Security; Cambodia; Laos), 21: 253–93.

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13. Ludu Aung Than: Nu’s Burma during the Cold War Michael W. Charney

Scholarship on the 1948–1950 period tends to argue that the communists should have won in Burma and that it was only by a fluke that the U Nu government survived. If that is true, then one could also argue that a major communist insurrection, the Guomindang (GMD) presence, and an invasion by the People’s Republic of China all should have drawn Burma into the Cold War and that it was only by a fluke that it escaped alignment. From 1962, the military takeover that occurred during that year, however, became the primary focus of research on Burma for decades. One impact of this has been that Nu’s impressions of and domestic activities during the Cold War per se have not received due treatment in the literature. As prime minister, it was his domestic policies in the fledgling Burmese government that help to explain the rise of military rule. Mary Callahan has recently offered a detailed analysis of the emergence of the Burmese national army, especially during the first decade or so of independence. As Callahan suggests, the army’s experience in the turbulent late 1940s, the fear of the extension of Cold War intervention over the GMD presence in northeastern Burma and as a possible adjunct to the Korean action, and the perceived failures on the part of the civil government to achieve national unity and stability in the 1950s led the military leadership to take matters into their own hands, beginning a project that continues to this day to remold Burmese into supporters of the state.1 Civilian leaders, or those who ran the government prior to 1962, however, also attempted to remold the Burmese during the Cold War and in reference to it. Foremost among these was the prime minister, “Thakin” and later “U” Nu. Nu’s role and seemingly obscure approaches to governance are sometimes given facile treatment, attributed to Buddhist practice, an image that Nu then

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and later attempted to encourage. The shadow of military rule also left a clear mark on Nu’s memories. Even his autobiography, U Nu: Saturday’s Son, published in the 1970s, is far less revealing about his attitudes during the Cold War than his writings prior to 1958. In the 1970s, Nu engaged in numerous activities in a context other than that of the Cold War. His removal from office, his imprisonment and exile, and his efforts to gather antigovernment forces under his banner all occurred as part of a struggle against military rule and were treated with ambivalence by the major Cold War powers, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the People’s Republic of China. From that perspective, the dangers Burma faced during the Cold War faded from view and old allies in the 1950s, such as Ne Win, were now long-entrenched enemies. In this chapter, I seek to understand the ways in which the Nu government reacted to the Cold War in the 1950s, independently of the post-1962 Cold War context, under the shadow of the eventual military takeover.

External Influences The greatest domestic threat to the Nu government came from the Communist Party of Burma. Since his student days in the 1930s, Marxist literature had played an important role in Nu’s thinking. In the 1930s, Nu himself had participated in introducing Marxist literature to Burmese readers. Nu established a book club, called Nagà-ni (Red dragon), which published translations of important works from the West, including numerous Marxist works.2 However, his postindependence perspectives on domestic communists were largely formulated during, and as a result of, the 1948–1950 crisis. The “White Flag” Burmese Communist Party under Than Tun had commenced its revolution, and sparked a larger civil war, on March 28, 1948.3 After the initial outbreak of this insurrection, Nu attempted to shore up leftist support by uniting leftist forces with the government under the “Marxist League.” This plan involved the establishment of more intimate relations with Soviet bloc countries, the nationalization of some industries and land, including some land redistribution to the peasants, the formation of a people’s army, a democratization of the government, and the creation of welfare programs, all directed toward the eventual goal of state socialism. The League would also disseminate Marxist literature, including the works of Georgi Mikhailovich Dimitrov, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, Karl Marx, Joseph Stalin, Josip Tito, and others. The communists, who argued that the government had sold out to the British with the Nu–Attlee agreement and raised the specter of the removal of British financial and military support, however, rebuffed this plan.4

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The Nu government very nearly collapsed. According to figures provided by Colonel Ba Than, a participant in the events (while a lieutenant -colonel), the condition of the Republican army was desperate, losing in one year 42 percent of its personnel through capture or mutiny, 45 percent of its equipment, and two-thirds of the country to seven insurgent groups. The army faced thirty thousand rebel soldiers, to which were added, in 1949, GMD forces who eventually numbered twelve thousand hardened veterans of the Chinese Civil War and well-trained local recruits. The situation was so dire, that the army resorted to conscripting mass numbers of levies, most of whom only received four hours of military training, while soldiers intended to serve as officers were whisked from the battlefield to training courses in Britain and then whisked back again upon their return from the airfield to the battlefield. The Burmese army reorganized and went on a counteroffensive in 1950.5 A good measure of domestic order was thus achieved, sufficient to allow the Nu government to begin to focus on the task of rebuilding the country and working toward the establishment of a socialist state.6 During the worst years of the civil war and after, Nu toured the country, making whistle-stop speeches and appealing to the population for support and to state servants for ethical behavior and correct thinking. After the fighting, the task of ensuring lasting stability was next on the agenda, for as Nu observed, Burma had moved back from the precipice, but could easily find itself on the edge of collapse again.7 Nu had made what was, at the time, a hasty declaration in July 1949, guaranteeing peace within one year. On July 19, 1950, the anniversary of that reasonably kept promise, Nu announced another one-year program, “From Peace to Stability,” which would seek not only to rebuild but to impress upon Burmese politicians and civil servants the need for proper acts and correct thinking. Nu and his ministers also sought ways to remold Burmese in such a way as to prevent a resurgence of antigovernment activities.8 This would not be an easy task, for, as Nu stressed although the “backbone” of the insurgencies had been broken, the “problem of mopping up disorganised remnants of politicodacoit [political-bandit] groups in many parts of the country,” still remained.9 Alongside Nu, U Thant emerged as the most important voice of the government’s position for the general population. Thant was well prepared for the task. Prior to independence he had served in the Directorate of Information and as deputy director of public relations for the Pa Sa Ba La (PSBL) (also known to the West as the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League [AFPFL]) from September 1, 1947. After independence, Thant rose steadily up the ranks, first as deputy secretary of the Information Ministry (May 1, 1948), and then as di-

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rector of broadcasting. Next, he was then given the task of writing a history of the PSBL. In 1949 he was appointed secretary of the Ministry of Information (September 1, 1949), a post he held until January 1954. This last posting included the task of managing the New Times of Burma and the Burma Weekly Bulletin. He also personally delivered commentaries on current events to the Burmese public through his own weekly radio program.10 During 1949, Thant gained significant experience in appealing to the hearts of the population as he both wrote many of Nu’s speeches and personally delivered other public speeches as well. According to June Bingham, Thant also later prided himself on becoming “something of an expert” in psychological warfare as a result of what he had learned from his responsibilities involved in censoring comic strips used for Soviet and U.S. propaganda.11 One important, although frequently ignored effort by Nu and Thant, was their use of, and moderate success with, the writing of a play for the government’s own propaganda efforts. Although stubborn about some things, such as his attempts to get the government to commit to patronage of and identification with Buddhism despite intragovernmental criticism, Nu was more flexible when it came to literature and playwriting and was especially amenable to the use of a play to carry government propaganda to the public. Nu’s own experience with fiction was not yet politicized. In the 1930s and 1940s, he had written several novels, all with nonpolitical themes, but they had helped to gain him literary credentials among the reading public. Thant, who became a charter member of the Burma Council on World Affairs12 and who had already accumulated significant experience in reading and sometimes censoring Soviet and American propaganda, was also aware of the potential propaganda value of politicized literature. On June 18, 1950, just after an attempt by Thein Pe Myint to introduce Marxist literature into the Rangoon University curriculum,13 Thant brought a committee of important writers and scholars of literature to Nu’s house. This committee, aside from Nu and Thant, consisted of U Thein Han, U Nyana, U Myo Min, and Myoma hsaya Hein.14 The writer and librarian (Rangoon University) Thein Han was director of textbook production and later chairman of the Burma Historical Commission. Writer, newspaper columnist, and film director (with the British Burma Film Company from the 1920s), Nyana had served as director of information in 1947 and held the post of director of film and stage from 1948–1951. Myo Min was professor of English (Rangoon University) and had served in the Japanese puppet regime as assistant secretary to the Foreign Office. Hsaya Hein had held a string of posts, serving as publicity officer in the Japanese puppet regime, deputy director of the Information Department in 1945, and beginning in 1948 was the publicity and distribution of-

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ficer of the Burma Translation Society (later the Sarpay Beikman). All of these men thus had experience with public information and literature, and occupied important positions involving the dissemination of information to the public.15 The intention of the committee was, through the composition of a play, to draw public attention to the dangers of attempting to take power by force rather than through elections. Although communists would be among those made to appear to be in the wrong, they would not be the exclusive targets as the play was intended to be a warning to other individuals and political groups as well, including those who threatened to further encourage divisions within the PSBL. Nu was sometimes, but not always, careful to avoid targeting political parties per se, especially given the confusing ideological composition of the PSBL (and of the insurgencies), and concentrated instead on whether a group was in rebellion or not. As he had explained to the Burmese Parliament in the autumn of 1949: We are suppressing the insurgents, not as Communists, White PVOs, M.N.D.O.s, or K.N.D.Os., but as enemies of the Union who have broken the law by rising up in open revolt. There are many ways open to these [groups] to pursue their own programmes and policy lawfully and in a manner acceptable to the people.16 Apparently, Nyana’s experience in writing movie scripts made him the ideal candidate for writing the play. Originally, the intention was to keep the play short, consisting of only three parts, probably to keep the simple message of the play clear to the audience. These parts were divided into three events, including the seizure of power by force of arms, and subsequent death by force of arms, of King Narathu (part one), and Baung-ga-sa Maung Maung (part two). The third part of the play would have the same message, but would cover the present period to give the play a modern context.17 After Nyana completed his version of the play, Thant and Thein Han read the manuscript and opened it up for discussion at another meeting at Nu’s house on August 5, 1950. After reviewing the apparently disappointing text, the committee decided that three separate incidents in one play was distracting attention from the intended message. Instead, Nu would now write a play focused on a single incident.18 Nu had experience with writing plays (pyazat), including one entitled Yet Set-Pa-Be Kwè (Oh, How Cruel), which portrayed the nationalist struggle against the British as well as the Indian landlords and moneylenders of the colonial period. The new play would focus instead on a young man who became a communist and how he came to regret his decision during the darkest hours of the civil war, particularly in 1949. The new play would be entitled Ludu Aung Than (frequently translated as The People Win

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Through).19 Nu began writing the play in August 1950 during his free time, as his boat moved from town to town in the Irrawaddy Delta while he was away promoting the “From Peace to Stability” program mentioned above. Nu had completed the first two scenes by the time he returned to Rangoon and completed it in September. After incorporating revisions at yet another meeting at Nu’s house, the manuscript was first submitted to the Executive Committee of the PSBL and then to the Council of Ministers, both of which required that changes be made to the manuscript. The play committee met twice more, on October 10 and November 4, 1950, and discussed word usage in the manuscript. They also agreed to name Nu as the sole author.20 Nu’s play was entirely focused on the events of the two-year period between March 1948 and March 1950. Ludu Aung Than had thus now shifted from a morality tale, largely focused on the premodern period, to one squarely focused on the critical moments of the civil war that had almost toppled the state. As Thant explains, the purpose of the play was to show the general population what happens when someone puts into action “evil plans to take national power by force without asking for it from the people by means of Democracy.”21 In Nu’s hands, however, a wide variety of points were introduced, all reflecting the same kinds of things he was stating in his public addresses. Perhaps the most important among these was that the Burmese population should not be influenced by external, self-interested countries, particularly those aligned together in the two blocs, Soviet and Western, in the Cold War. Nu had been wary of the external repercussions of domestic events early on. As Maung Maung observes, the international reaction to his Marxist League plan made Nu realize that the “borderline between domestic affairs and foreign affairs has become extremely thin.”22 More serious, however, were internal repercussions from external influences and events. The communist rebellion provided an early lesson, as Nu firmly believed then and later, that the Soviet Union had instigated it.23 Although the Nu government would continue to wage war, like its military successors, against the communists at home, Nu believed that he could only succeed by isolating Burmese political forces from external influences. Nu saw the domestic implications of Cold War involvement as a serious threat to national stability, as involvement would bring infiltration and division. As Nu explained, “[T]here can be no infiltration either by communists or capitalists whoever they may be.”24 In the new January 12, 1953 preface to the reprinting of his 1945 work, Burma Under the Japanese, Nu focused on the events of the Japanese occupation as a means of warning those at home and abroad of the internal dangers that his Burma faced. As opposed to the rather mundane preface of the first edition, which merely ex-

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pressed a desire for historical accuracy, and a call to others to record their experiences as well, the new preface was political: Beware of Pied Pipers!—This, as I look back on the past before the war and afterwards, seems to me the moral of this little book. Before the war so many Burmans were so ready to follow the seductive piping of the Japanese without realizing at all in what direction it was leading us. . . . Yet even now it seems that many of us have not learned the lesson. All over the world pipers are chanting new tunes that open up entrancing visions of imaginary wonderlands. These tunes find their way to Burma and men and women who are deluded by them stir up trouble in various ways that would only bring ruin to the country. They are like foolish children who listen to their aunt rather than to their mother. So I hope these sketches of life in Burma under the Japanese will help to teach my countrymen not to follow in the train of these pied pipers, however seductively their tunes may strike the ear.25 Between the composition of the Ludu Aung Than (1950) and its first stage performance (1952), Thant further encouraged the regime to step up promotion of non-communist national unity in several ways. In 1951, Thant created the Bureau of Special Investigation, the Burmese version of the American Federal Bureau of Investigation.26 For Nu, rebuilding the country required what he called “moral uplift,” especially in the economic, intellectual, and physical spheres, but these would take a considerable amount of time to reach fruition. In the meantime, he was not satisfied to sit by “with folded arms” while “termites” ate away at the moral pillars of the state. Warning the inspectors of the bureau that he was always keeping an eye on their own loyalty, and was satisfied thus far, he informed them that “your assignment to eradicate termites is one of the greatest tasks for the stability of the Union.”27 The bureau gave mettle to the Nu government’s attempts to keep civil servants and others in line. Corruption became the target of investigation, arrest, and imprisonment,28 but so too did other activities. Initially, as Nu had outlined at the swearing-in ceremony for the investigators held on December 17, 1951, there were three target groups who could bring about moral decay: (1) government servants, including judges and members of the military; (2) politicians; and (3) merchants. Nu’s suggestion that the Bureau would cause “undesirable elements to disappear,” however, left a degree of vagueness that could possibly incorporate other groups, which indeed it soon did.29 The Bureau of Special Investigation made heavy use of Section 5 of the Emergency

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Provisions Act, which was enacted the previous year on March 9, 1950. This act established vague terms under which anyone opposed to the government could be arrested and imprisoned with impunity. For example, under its provisions, anyone who hindered any aspect of government duties, who by their actions reduced respect for the government or caused soldiers or civil bureaucrats to be disloyal or otherwise not perform their duties properly, did anything to cause panic among any group of people, or eroded public morality or conduct that undermined government stability could be imprisoned or arrested. The Emergency Provisions Act also gave the government the tool necessary to suppress domestic critics. The vaguest section of the document, for example, is section “e,” which makes it illegal to “spread false news, knowing, or having reason to believe that it is not true.”30 Section 5 of the Emergency Provisions Act would, during the Nu period and later under the Ne Win and other military governments up to the present, be the most commonly utilized act for the suppression of countergovernment views and activities. Not only opposition politicians,31 but also writers, editors, and publishers found themselves imprisoned or threatened with imprisonment during this period, including some of Nu’s former associates and friends. Edward M. Law Yone, editor of the Nation, for example, had a close call when Nu, irritated by a critical article that Law Yone had just published, prepared to place him under arrest, although Thant intervened before the order could be issued.32 One of the political prisoners during this period was Nu’s old friend, Ludu U Hla. Hla was a writer as well as the publisher of a leftist newspaper, the Ludu Daily News, and the owner of a leftist publishing house, Ludu-kyibwayay Press, both in Mandalay. During his three years in prison, from 1953/1954 to 1956 (Hla on separate occasions provides two different years for the commencement of his imprisonment by the Nu regime), Hla took notes and wrote some nine books, including The Caged Ones and The Victim, on his experiences and those of other prisoners.33 Hla and other political prisoners were treated better than ordinary criminals, but prevented from seeing their families and, more importantly, from publishing. Years later, after his own arrest and release under the military regime, Nu would visit Hla to apologize, claiming that his imprisonment was decided by Thant, but he could do nothing at the time.34 In any event, the Nu regime steadily attempted to silence criticism in the press. Thant had also founded the Dimogareisi Pyan-pwa-ye Athin or Dimogareisi Binnya Byan-bwa-ye Athin (known to the West as the Society for the Extension of Democratic Ideals) in July 1950 (although 1951 is frequently mistakenly mentioned as the start date). Eventually opening up an official building on Bogyoke Aung-gyaw Street in downtown Rangoon, the society was open to anyone and aimed to avoid connection with any political party. The stated

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purpose of this society was, as its title indicates, to promote the interests of democracy in Burma. To do so, it had two chief aims: (1) to spread general knowledge of democracy (among the Burmese) and (2) to instill in Burma conventional democratic procedures. Efforts that were directed toward the first goal included the publication of texts that furthered its aims.35 One wonders whether the close coincidence of timing for creation of the society and the initiation of the play-writing project were connected. In any case, in early 1951, the completed manuscript for Ludu Aung Than was first submitted for print publication to this society, apparently its first publication endeavor.36 A year later, in August 1952, the society published an English translation made by U Khin Zaw, with assistance from Peter Murray and J.S. Furnivall.37 The society would also later cooperate with the Congress for Cultural Freedom in holding the Cultural Freedom in Asia conference on February 17–20, 1955, and the publication of a volume of the proceedings in 1956. This conference, which included a wide range of writers and intellectuals from across Asia, including Mochtar Lubis, would debate the impact of communism, Western influence, and intellectual freedom in the region.38 Although the Society for the Extension of Democratic Ideals issued a pamphlet version of the play, Thant and Nu’s Ludu Aung Than committee hoped for widen its media reach. This came first in the form of a one act per week show on Burmese radio.39 The first public performance occurred in the United States when the Pasadena Playhouse in California performed Ludu Aung Than under the title of “The People Win Through” in early 1952, with Burmese dignitaries (part of the Burmese Education Mission that was on a tour of the United States at the time) in attendance, although it is not clear if they relied upon Khin Zaw’s or another translation.40 The Nu government had not successfully utilized film, a potentially powerful form of media, for communicating to the people. In the 1950s, Burma had about 150 cinemas. Although about one-third of these were located in Rangoon, “[a]lmost no little market town is so remote or old-fashioned but it has its cinema, run from some rickety, salvaged Fourteenth Army power plant.”41 Domestic film companies such as A1 Film, Aungzeya Film, and British Burma Film, literally “churned out” large numbers of films designed as light entertainment, for Burma’s film industry had not yet been politicized or under tight government control. This began to change in 1952. Nu appointed Thant as the chairman of the Burma Film Board, which selected Burmese films for the Burmese version of the Academy Awards.42 The Ludu Aung Than play committee had discussed shooting and distributing a film version of the play to reach the general Burmese population and even an English-language version for world distribution.43 This seems to have been preempted by the Americans. In 1953, the Cascade Pictures Corporation of America made a film version of

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this play, filming it in Burma with an all-Burmese cast.44 The attempt to introduce this film version of Ludu Aung Than, with its heavily politicized theme, thus may have come as a shock to Burmese audiences. This film appears to have been poorly received by some Burmese, which in one case, leading to the torching of a theater running the film.45

Neutralism The Nu government declared neutrality as its official foreign policy at the beginning of the 1950s. Nu had foreshadowed this declaration on July 19, 1950, when he explained that “[i]n the present circumstances of our Union, it is simply impossible for us to join a particular power bloc and fight the opposing bloc. . . .”46 This observation reflected more than the weary state of the Nu government and its armed forces, but also the Nu government’s belief that it would be impossible to isolate its domestic enemies from external influences if it turned to alignment. Simultaneously, the fact that many political and politically mobilized ethnic groups had aligned (or sought to do so) with one of the two Cold War blocs, meant that any alignment on the part of the government might add further fuel to the ongoing civil war at home.47 External events would also further encourage a neutralist stance. The UN reaction to the Korean War temporarily assured the Nu government that it could count on the former’s support if foreign intervention occurred. However, when the UN soon appeared to be acting not as a neutral force, but rather in the interests of American Cold War policies, expectations diminished.48 As Nu explained before Parliament on September 5, 1950, on the subject of the Korean situation, Take a glance at our geographic position. . . . We are hemmed in like a tender gourd among the cactus. We cannot move an inch. If we act irresponsibly like some half-baked politicians . . . and thrust the Union of Burma into the arms of one bloc, the other bloc will not be content to look on with folded arms. Oh, no!49 The example of Nehru’s announcement of a non-aligned foreign policy for Burma’s gargantuan neighbor, India, also provided confidence that neutralism was an alternative to alignment.50 The Nu government was mainly concerned with China, which was its most immediate foreign threat, especially given the war against communists at home. The continuing presence within Burma’s borders of GMD troops, and suspected American support of them, also raised the specter of PRC intervention (a development later nearly realized).51 By maintaining strict neutrality in

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the Cold War, external communist intervention, especially from the PRC could be avoided. Thant appears to have shared this perspective. Commenting on the Vietnam War in 1965, Thant suggested that if South Vietnam had not allowed a substantial American military presence, it could have followed Burma’s model for suppressing the communist insurgency, for unlike the Viet Cong case, in Burma “there has not been a single instance of outside help to the Burmese Communists.”52 Nu believed that he could maintain the balance between the suppression of communists at home and good relations with the PRC on the basis of national experience. The PRC, he argued, where communists had emerged in a different context, could be dealt with. As Nu explained: [Our] viewpoint is different from that of most of those who are antiCommunist. As we do not like Communism, we do not want to see the spread of this creed into our territories. We have, therefore, been doing our best to prevent such a contingency here. But, it is far from our intention to meddle in their [PRC] affairs. They have chosen communism in order to suit their own circumstances.53 Due to his interest in preventing external intervention, Nu interpreted the Cold War mainly in terms of the standoff between the PRC and the United States. Nu saw this standoff as essentially a diplomatic impasse, the end of which he could help negotiate. As he explained, “We feel that as neutralists in power politics we ought to do something to enable both America and China to achieve their ends without resorting to a bloody warfare.”54 Some insight into Nu’s expectations can be gained from reference to a popular Western book promoted by Nu during and after his student days. The Nagà-ni book club, mentioned above, published more than Marxist works. The first work that Nu translated for the book club, for example, was Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, which offered readers a more “politic” approach to their dealings with other people, from management style to the wording of correspondence. Most of all, it urged readers to avoid conflict and take a positive, rather than a negative, approach to motivating people and getting what one wanted.55 Nagà-ni published some eight thousand copies of Nu’s Burmese translation, under the title of Meitta-bala-tiga, in 1938. Nu’s translation was not published again until 1949, after independence, and during the worst period of the communist and Karen insurgencies. New editions published in that year and in 1950 numbered some twenty-five thousand and three thousand copies, respectively, being sold alongside uncertain numbers of English editions published in Bombay. In 1953, Nu’s translation would be reprinted in thirty thousand copies, totaling more than the number of copies published in 1949 and 1950 combined.56 How to Win Friends and Influence People, whether influ-

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encing or sharing Nu’s approach to politics, certainly reflected the kind of political tactics followed by Nu the politician and premier. Nu would be extremely cautious in his choice of words, especially when they might offend or force the other party to ignore his intended message. As Nu declared in Parliament in 1948, “There is no Karen–Burman problem, but only the problems of good men versus bad men.”57 Nu’s somewhat naive public statements of American and Chinese misunderstandings could just as easily have been drawn from Carnegie’s book. In December 1954, for example, when Nu met with Chou Enlai in Beijing, he informed the Chinese leader that [t]he Americans are very generous and brave. . . . The Chinese people are also very generous and brave. We do not want these two esteemed countries confronting each other with bitterness and hostility. As a friend of both we want these two countries to be on the friendliest of terms. . . . I will exert my utmost to bring about an understanding between the two countries.58 Five months later, in May 1955, Nu told an American audience in Washington, DC, the following: Like all peoples, the Chinese have some good traits and some bad traits. Similarly, the Americans have some good traits and some bad traits. Let the Americans pick out the good Chinese traits and not concentrate on their bad traits: similarly, let the Chinese pick out the good American traits and not dwell only on the bad American traits.59 Despite Nu’s efforts to separate domestic and international communists by abstaining from open Cold War alignment, his Ludu Aung Than, already an American-produced play and movie, also found its way into anticommunist efforts in the West that sought to identify Burma as one of the countries facing the communist threat. If Nu were not cooperating with America in the Cold War, he could be made to appear so. For the United States, Burma in 1950 and later was one of the “dominoes” that would be certain to fall to the communists if the latter were not stopped in Indochina.60 The Nu government’s struggle against the communist insurrection provided evidence that could lend itself to Western propaganda. Some anonymous pamphlets, such as “Those Fickle Communists!” (1952), almost certainly sanctioned by the Nu government and published in both Burmese and in English translation in Rangoon during the period, were obvious candidates.61 More nuanced treatment was required in the recharacterization of Ludu Aung Than from a work broadly on national unity into one specifically on the

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threat of international communism. Nevertheless, changes slowly crept into the work’s various incarnations as they were presented to the outside world. One of those leading this effort was Edward Hunter. Hunter was a journalist and former OSS man, best known for coining the term “brainwashing” in several books on the PRC, the communist threat to the “free world,” and communist propaganda techniques.62 Hunter traveled from country to country, wherever a communist threat was apparent, writing books that would make Western readers aware of the dire situation that they faced from Soviet aggression.63 Hunter was a proponent of the thesis that the non-communist world was also losing the Cold War on the basis of territorial and population loss to communism since 1945, as he testified in Congress before the Committee on Un-American Activities on March 13, 1958.64 Khin Zaw’s 1952 English translation of Nu’s play came into Hunter’s possession. In his lengthy introduction to the publication of this translation in 1957, Hunter promoted Nu as a defender of democracy in the face of international communist aggression. In his The Continuing Revolt: The Black Book of Red China, which he wrote in 1958 for International Research on Communist Techniques Incorporated and The Committee of One Million (Against the Admission of Communist China to the United Nations), Hunter would go on to suggest the roots of this problem. As he explained, “Burma, the first Asian country to recognize Red China . . . was rewarded with uninterrupted guerrilla warfare.” Hunter argued, in contradiction to the public statements of Nu and other members of his cabinet, that PRC clandestine aid continued to feed the insurrections in Burma and that in addition to propaganda, the PRC was exporting both opium and heroin through Chinese communities in Southeast Asia “with the same objective of breaking down resistance.”65 Hunter felt that Nu had been “goaded” by the PRC’s role in supporting the insurrections into writing Ludu Aung Than. The theme of the play was characterized in 1958 by Hunter, in The Continuing Revolt, as taking a harder line against communism than it actually had, describing it as “exposing the foreign allegiance of the leaders in his country’s Red Revolt.”66 Thant had lent some weight to this characterization in his revised introduction for Khin Zaw’s translation of Ludu Aung Than. In his original Burmese-language introduction to the play, intended for Burmese audiences alone, Thant had said nothing about communists. The relevant paragraph in Thant’s original Burmese note reads as follows: [Thant:] The main aim in writing this play was that we wanted to reveal the wrongs that occur because of evil plans to take national power by force without asking for it from the people by means of Democracy.67

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In Thant’s English translation, presumably intended for international audiences only, he explained that: [Thant:] The People Win Through shows what actually happens when Burmese Communists decide to stage an insurrection.68 Hunter added to this word play in his own 1957 introduction to the play. In frequent references to Nu’s umbrella political organization, the PSBL, known to the West as the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League, for example, Hunter dropped both “Anti-Fascist” and perhaps the too leftist-sounding “People’s,” and abbreviated it to simply the “Freedom League.”69 Another curious change that may have occurred was in the title of the film. According the Hunter, the film version was not entitled with the positive Ludu Aung Than (or the English translation, The People Win Through), but simply with the negative-sounding Rebellion.70 Perhaps, for the producers of the film, The People Win Through had leftist connotations. Whether the change in title actually occurred, or whether the film had both a Burmese language and an English language title is unclear. Nevertheless, Burmese who saw the film in Burma remember it as being entitled (or it may popularly have been known as) Ludu Aung Than.71 Thus, by reading Khin Zaw’s English translation of Ludu Aung Than (and Hunter’s lengthy introduction), attending English-language performances of the play in Pasadena, California, or, possibly, by viewing screenings of the movie version, American audiences could be satisfied that Nu and democracy in Burma were on the frontlines of the Cold War, staving off international communist aggression.

Buddhism and Anti-Communism By the time that Hunter had written his introduction in 1957, the Burmeselanguage publication of Ludu Aung Than had been introduced into middle schools. Although Hunter suggested that “this was the age group to which Communists make their most calculated appeals,” the play was actually circulating among an adult audience as well. For those not inclined to read, the movie version continued to be shown throughout Burma, sometimes on roadsides, and there were even cartoon versions illustrated by U Bagale.72 Ludu Aung Than‘s desired impact, however, had not been achieved, as indicated in the elections a year earlier. In 1956, communist-oriented parties won a far larger percentage of the votes than expected and Nu resigned himself to cleaning up his party, leaving the prime minister post to U Ba Swe. Although Nu briefly reassumed leadership in 1957, he found that he could no longer hold the government together in the face of both continuing insurgencies in the

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countryside and a disintegrating political situation in Rangoon. In 1958, matters worsened when a split occurred in the PSBL into the “stable” PSBL under Ba Swe and the “clean” PSBL under Nu. In the autumn of that year, at Nu’s request, General Ne Win was constitutionally selected as the new prime minister, inaugurating a military caretaker government that ruled Burma from November 1, 1958 to February 6, 1960. After Nu stepped down as prime minister, he devoted his time, again, to the attempt to straighten out the PSBL. By this time, Nu seems to have decided that the only solution for national unity was by focusing on a connection between religion and politics. Nu thus attempted to conclude a long-term effort on his part to identify the state with Buddhism, by campaigning to make Buddhism the state religion of Burma. Throughout his rule, Nu, in cooperation with many of his ministers and members of Parliament, introduced legislation and initiated other efforts that would provide for government patronage of Buddhism, introduce Buddhist education into the schools, and ensure Buddhist orthodoxy. His most famous role in promoting Buddhism was in sponsoring in Burma the Sixth World Council of Buddhism.73 Some members of his government were critical of the expense. Thant, for example, was an important critic of the extravagant expenses of Nu’s Buddhist program, arguing on one occasion that the artificial cave that Nu planned to build for the Sixth World Buddhist Synod was too expensive and he also opposed Nu’s attempts to make Buddhism the state religion.74 Making Buddhism the state religion appealed to Burma’s rural communities, the main focus of communist propaganda. As Taylor observes, Nu and many other leaders of the PSBL believed that bolstering Buddhism among the general population would help to create an obstacle to communist victory. The Buddhist sangha (organization of monks) itself had initiated an anti-communist program as early as 1945, arguing that the communists were “anti-religious.”75 Nu’s approach had significant appeal for monks and the rural population and it pressured the communists into taking greater care in defending their stand on Buddhism. As Taylor points out, Aung San and “the Communist founders of the AFO” sought to separate religion from politics.76 Early attacks on Buddhism and religion by communist leaders, including Thein Pe Myint (who had resigned from the party in March 1948), Maung Maung Hein, and Zauktho Thaung Tin, however, were rescinded prior to the party’s turn-about on religion in March 1952, and rebuked in the new “Party Line on Religion” dated March 10, 1952.77 The new party line separated individual choice from the kind of state indoctrination of religion now underway in Nu’s programs. Buddhism, it was argued, like other religions, was being used as an instrument by capitalists to “suppress agitation” or “human emotions that would ordinarily erupt.” In the people’s government that would be establish in Burma once

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the communists had won power, definition of the division between, and clarification of, the roles and place of religion and the state in people’s lives would take place. Religion, for example, would be excluded from the Constitution and left to individual choice. Buddhist monasteries and mission schools would focus on teaching religion, while education would be left to the public schools. Religion, however, would eventually die out, on its own, not through state suppression. The publication of this document, as part of the “secret documents captured from important Communist cells” in the Nation on March 17, 1953, came under the heading “BCP Lays Down Party Line in Regard to Religion— ‘Don’t Kill; Let Die.’”78 From 1958 to 1960, Ne Win’s caretaker government followed the Nu government’s lead in arresting critics and publishing mass propaganda directed against domestic communists. Reflecting Nu’s initiatives, these efforts by the military connected the struggle against domestic communists with the preservation of Buddhism. In 1959, for example, the Amery Psychological Warfare Directorate published the essay titled “Dhammantaraya—Dhamma in Danger” in the Burma Weekly Bulletin and in the form of millions of separate pamphlets, which accused communists of looting religious temples, burning pagodas, and directing Marx’s slogan of religion as the opium of the masses at Buddhism, calling Buddha the single greatest enemy to the people. In short, it stressed the reasons why communists posed a danger to Burmese Buddhism.79 Reportedly, this sparked “spontaneous” meetings in almost five hundred towns, attended by eighty thousand monks and nearly five million lay people who issued denunciations of Burmese communists.80 This mass mobilization likely aided Nu’s “clean” PSBL in the 1960 election, which it won; a constitutional amendment making Buddhism the official religion was passed on August 26, 1961.81

Conclusion What made Burma’s experiences during the early years of the Cold War unique was the prominent place held by writers in Burmese society. Nu was not only prime minister and the country’s preeminent lay supporter of Buddhism, but also a writer. Prior to and during his rule, his publications were read by ordinary Burmese, taught in schools to Burmese teenagers, and, as we have seen, even performed on the silver screen. It is more than an interesting sidelight to the Asian theater of the Cold War that, during an ongoing civil war, a prime minister and his chief ministers would devote so much personal energy to producing a play to present their position to the population. It indicates that Nu and his allies took the place of literature, and Nu’s credentials as a writer, seri-

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ously, and early on realized the importance of propaganda, carefully organized and cautiously worded, as a means of shoring up public support. At a time when many other Southeast Asian leaders of postindependence regimes relied heavily on external allies, such as Ngo Dinh Diem, and neglected building up national solidarity, Nu’s regime mobilized itself surprisingly quickly to forge national unity and to avoid alignment with either the Western or the communist blocs (on Ngo Dinh Diem, see Edward Miller’s contribution to this volume). The defense of Burmese neutralism and attempts to keep Burmese domestic affairs free from foreign influence would shift from civilian leaders to the army. In 1957, Thant moved on to become Burma’s permanent representative at the UN where he continued to keep Burma out of foreign entanglements until 1961, when he became the acting secretary general for the UN. He would then break his connections with Burma until his death in 1974. During the tenure of the brief military caretaker regime and from 1962 to 1967 after the military coup, Ne Win continued to attempt to isolate Burma’s communists from their nearest likely support by maintaining good relations with China. This effort included a visit by Ne Win to China that ended with the conclusion of the border agreement on January 28, 1960, closing a long effort by the Nu government.82 This cordiality would be broken when the PRC, undergoing the Cultural Revolution, would publicly interfere with Burma’s Chinese population, frightening the military regime into repression. The Nu regime and democracy (as understood by Nu) failed in Burma, as Mary Callahan has argued, because of the problem of governability. The Nu regime “was in no position” to build a state in the face of both the immediate problems of the civil war and much older traditions of frontier autonomy.83 As demonstrated elsewhere in terms of democratic and military institution building84 and the emergence of Cold War culture, as discussed in this chapter, the Nu regime’s reactions to this hostile environment left a lasting political heritage. Of the fourteen years of Burmese independence until the final 1962 military coup that installed military rule up to the present, the 1950–1957 period witnessed the emergence of some of the principal approaches that Burma would apply to dealing with, both through foreign diplomacy and representations to the people, the Cold War. These approaches included efforts by the government to adopt “neutralism,” never quite clearly defined; tight government control of the press and critics; a close connection between the state and Buddhism especially in reference to suppressing the enduring (whether real or, as was the case in the late 1980s, at best overblown and at worst largely imagined) domestic communist insurgency; and a massive reliance on propaganda directed against external influences. Many of these approaches have proved equally useful in suppressing the National League for Democracy in the

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post–Cold War era. While the military governments since 1962 have taken these and other approaches to greater lengths than their pre-1962 predecessors, some of the more important of these approaches owe their origins to the ways in which the Nu regime attempted to survive the Cold War and its domestic consequences.

Notes 1. Mary P. Callahan, Making Enemies: War and State Building in Burma (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2004), 221–22. 2. The book club sold such publications from the western corner of the Scott Market (today, Bogyoke-ze) making it easily accessible to most Rangoon readers. Personal communication, U Thaw Kaung. The book club drew the attention of British police who urged the Ba Maw administration in 1938 to ban the sale of such books in order to prevent the circulation of Marxist ideas and, in Ba Maw’s mind, to preserve the influence of British colonial propaganda. Robert H. Taylor, Marxism and Resistance in Burma, 1942–1945: Thein Pe Myint’s Wartime Traveler (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1984), 70. 3. Ù Maung Maung, Burma and General Ne Win (Rangoon: Religious Affairs Department Press, 1969), 201. The Communist Party had split in 1946, into a minority “Red Flag” group that rebelled at that time and a mainstream Stalinist, “White Flag” group under Than Tun. The current reference refers to the latter. 4. Ù Maung Maung, Burma in the Family of Nations (Amsterdam: Djambatan, 1956), 133. 5. Ù Ba Than, The Roots of the Revolution: A Brief History of the Defence Services of the Union of Burma and the Ideals for Which They Stand (Rangoon: Director of Information, 1962), 67, 69; Maung Maung, Burma and General Ne Win, 222, 228. 6. Edward M. Law Yone and David J. Mandelbaum, “Pacification in Burma,” Far Eastern Survey 19, no. 17 (October 11, 1950), 182. 7. Ù Nu, “Our Policy and Programme,” speech delivered on July 19, 1950, in Ù Nu, From Peace to Stability (Rangoon: Ministry of Information, Government of the Union of Burma, 1951), 83–84. 8. Ibid., 82. 9. Ù Nu, “From Peace to Stability,” speech delivered in October and November 1950 in Rangoon, Moulmein, and Mandalay, in Ù Nu, From Peace to Stability (Rangoon: Ministry of Information, Government of the Union of Burma, 1951), 110. 10. June Bingham, U Thant: The Search for Peace (London: Victor Gollancsz Ltd., 1966), 168–70. 11. Ibid., 170, 174. 12. Ibid., 170. 13. In an episode usually referred to in the secondary literature only by John F. Cady, the writer, former Communist Party of Burma member, and supporter of the Nu government, Thein Pe Myint, pushed for the Nu government to realize the aims of the constitution, the creation a socialist state in Burma. In early June 1950, arguing that this goal necessitated preparing the ground among those undergoing university education,

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Thein Pe Myint proposed in the Council of Rangoon University a communization of the school’s curriculum. Thein Pe Myint’s proposal included using as textbooks English translations of some of the books Nu had earlier proposed as part of the Marxist League plan, as well as G.V. Plekhanov’s Materialist Concept of History. No one seconded the motion and a special committee, including Thein Pe Myint, was created to study the curriculum instead. In September 1950, when students voted to ban political parties from the university campus, they also rejected Thein Pe Myint’s proposed “Marxist curriculum.” John F. Cady, A History of Modern Burma (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1958), 611. 14. Thant, “Pyazat-baw-bauk-la-poún,” 77. 15. Background information comes from WWB, 41, 44, 105, 119. 16. Ù Nu, “Bullets versus Ballots, Speech delivered in Parliament on 28 September 1949,” in Nu, From Peace to Stability, 15. 17. Ù Thant, “Pyazat-baw-bauk-la-poún,” in Ù Nu, Ludu Aung Than Pyazat (Rangoon: Dimoga-yei-si-pinya-byán-pwà-yè-haùng, 1958), 77. 18. Ibid., 77. 19. Hugh Tinker, The Union of Burma: A Study of the First Years of Independence (London: Oxford University Press, 1956), 182. 20. Thant, “Pyazat-baw-bauk-la-poún,” 78. 21. Ibid., 78. 22. Maung Maung, Burma in the Family of Nations, 134. 23. Ù Nu, Ù Nu: Saturday’s Son, translated by Ù Law Yone and edited by Ù Kyaw Win (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975), 276. 24. Ù Nu, For World Peace and Progress (Rangoon: Ministry of Information, Union of Burma, 1954), 4–5. 25. Ù Nu, Burma Under the Japanese: Pictures and Portraits (London: MacMillan & Co., 1954), ix. 26. Bingham, U Thant, 170, 182. 27. Ù Nu, Translation of the Hon’ble Prime Minister’s Speech Delivered Before the Officers of the Bureau of Special Investigation on Saturday, the 17th October 1953 (Rangoon: Superintendent, Government Printing and Stationery, Burma, 1953), 1–2. 28. Bingham, U Thant, 170, 182. 29. Ù Nu, “Speech Delivered at the Swearing in Ceremony of Members of the Bureau of Special Investigation on 17th December 1951,” in Nu, Burma Looks Ahead (Rangoon: Superintendent, Government Printing and Stationery, Burma, 1953), 23, 25. 30. The translation for this act comes from the Burma Lawyers Council website, http://www.geocities.com/blc_dc/epa_e.html. 31. Mary P. Callahan, “Democracy in Burma: The Lessons of History,” NBR Analysis 9, no. 3 (1998), 12. 32. Bingham, U Thant, 181. 33. Ludu Ù Hla, The Victim, Than Tun and Kathleen Forbes, trans. (Mandalay: Kyipwayay Press, 1973); Ludu Ù Hla, The Caged Ones, Sein Tu, trans. (Bangkok: Orchid Press, 1998). 34. U Thaw Kaung, personal communication. 35. “Ludu Aung Than hnín Dimogareisi Byán-bwà-yè Athìn,” in Ù Nu, Ludu Aung Than Pyazat (Rangoon: Dimoga-yei-si-pinya-byán-pwà-yè-haùng, 1958), vii. 36. Thant, “Pyazat-baw-bauk-la-poún,” 78.

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37. U Thant, “Introduction,” in Ù Nu, The People Win Through, translated by Ù Khin Zaw (Rangoon: Society for the Extension of Democratic Ideals, 1952), ii. 38. The proceedings were published in Report of the Rangoon Conference on Cultural Freedom in Asia (Rangoon: Congress of Cultural Freedom, 1956). 39. Edward Hunter, “Introduction,” in The People Win Through: A Play by U Nu (New York: Taplinger Publishing Co., 1957), 50. 40. Ibid.; U Thaw Kaung, personal communication. 41. Tinker, The Union of Burma, 183. 42. Bingham, U Thant, 170. 43. Thant, “Pyazat-baw-bauk-la-poún,” 78. 44. Hunter, “Introduction,” 50. The efforts to turn the play into a film are discussed at length in Michael W. Charney, “U Nu, China, and the ‘Burmese’ Cold War: Propaganda in Burma in the 1950s,” forthcoming. 45. Richard Butwell, U Nu of Burma (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1969), 81; Personal communication from Jon Fernquist November 2004. 46. Ù Nu, From Peace to Stability (Rangoon: Superintendent, Government Printing and Stationery, Burma, 1951), 189. 47. Robert H. Taylor, Foreign and Domestic Consequences of the KMT Intervention in Burma (Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 1973), 1. 48. Taylor, The State in Burma, 262. 49. Nu, From Peace to Stability, 102. 50. Taylor, The State in Burma, 263. 51. Ibid. 52. Bingham, U Thant, 38. 53. Ù Nu, For World Peace and Progress (Rangoon: Ministry of Information, Union of Burma, 1954), 2. 54. Ibid., 3. 55. Alongside Nu’s translation, one can still find numerous cheap edition copies of Carnegie’s original work that must have circulated during the period. Just recently, I obtained a copy of Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends & Influence People, 16th Indian ed. (Bombay: D.B. Taraporevala Sons & Co., n.d.), from a book mat in downtown Yangon (Rangoon). 56. Ù Nu (trans.), Meitta-bala-tiga (Rangoon: Burma Translation Society, 1954). 57. Nu, From Peace to Sability, 70. 58. Quoted in Maung Maung, Burma and General Ne Win, 238. 59. Ibid. 60. Michael Yahuda, The International Politics of the Asia-Pacific, 1945–1995 (London: Routledge, 1996), 128, 130. 61. Those Fickle Communists! Translation of a pamphlet published by Myanma Mandaing Press, June 1952 (Rangoon: Burma Union Press, 1952). 62. Edward Hunter, Brain-washing in Red China: The Calculated Destruction of Men’s minds, rev., exp. ed. (New York: Vanguard Press, 1953). 63. See, for example, Edward Hunter, The Past and Present: A Year in Afghanistan (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1958). 64. House Committee on Un-American Activities, Communist Psychological Warfare (Brainwashing), consultation with Edward Hunter, 85th Cong., 2d sess., March 13, 1958 (Committee print), http://www.crossroad.to/Quotes/globalism/Congress.htm.

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65. Edward Hunter, The Continuing Revolt: The Black Book on Red China (New York: Bookmailer, 1958), 15, 17. 66. Hunter, The Continuing Revolt, 15. 67. Thant, “Pyazat-baw-bauk-la-poún,” 78. 68. Hunter, “Introduction,” 49; Thant, “Introduction,” ii. 69. See, for example, Hunter, “Introduction,” 23, 40, 41, 43, 46. 70. Ibid., 50. 71. Tin Than Oo, “No Desire to Relapse into Miserable Life of the Past,” New Light of Myanmar (September 1, 2003), 1. 72. Ibid.; Hunter, “Introduction,” 50. 73. Tinker, The Union of Burma, 167–77; Taylor, The State in Burma, 288–90. 74. Bingham, U Thant, 181, 199. 75. Robert H. Taylor, The State in Burma (London: C. Hurst & Co., 1987), 288. 76. Ibid. 77. “Party-line on Religion,” March 10, 1952, in Klaus Fleischmann, ed., Documents on Communism in Burma 1945–1977 (Hamburg: Institute fur Asienkunde, 1989), 129. 78. Ibid., 129–31. 79. Maung Maung, Burma and General Ne Win, 267–69, 271–72; Ba Than, The Roots of the Revolution, 71. 80. Ba Than, The Roots of the Revolution, 71. 81. E. Michael Mendelson, Sangha and State in Burma: A Study of Monastic Sectarianism and Leadership, John P. Ferguson, ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975), 350. 82. Maung Maung, Burma and General Ne Win, 267–69; 271–72; Ba Than, The Roots of the Revolution, 71. 83. Callahan, “Democracy in Burma,” 15. 84. Ibid., 5–26.

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14. Lawan dan kawan (Friends and Foes): Indonesian Islam and Communism during the Cold War (1945–1960) Rémy Madinier

L enin’s famous adage that World War I was an “accelerator of history” could equally apply to the Cold War in Indonesia. Its emergence in late 1947 set into motion profound changes in the Indonesian political landscape and led to a major confrontation between the Islamic and communist forces in Indonesian politics. And yet in 1945, nothing foreshadowed that such a violent confrontation between two movements sharing the same revolutionary enthusiasm for independence would explode less than two decades later. As this chapter will show, the emergence and impact of the Cold War on local Indonesian politics had much to do with it. It certainly created the political and psychological conditions of the 1965–1966 crisis in Indonesian politics, which witnessed the complete eradication of the Indonesian communist movement.

From National Revolution to the Madiun Revolt: Convergences and Confrontations Proclaimed on August 17, 1945, Indonesian independence gave rise to a short but important period of unanimous patriotic unity. The adoption of Pancasila (Five Principles) in the preamble of the constitution symbolized it well.1 This state ideology cleverly encompassed the religious and social aims of all the political forces that had participated in the struggle against the former colonizer.2 Under constant threat and confined to certain areas of Java and Sumatra by Dutch troops, the young republic experienced a complex and extremely agitated political life. Founded in early November 1945, Indonesian parties were

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organized around three main pillars: nationalism, Marxism, and Islam. For nearly two years, the latter two were in revolutionary opposition to the government.3 Both the Masjumi Party, representing all Islamic organizations in Indonesia, and the Communist Party subscribed to the radical program of the Dewan Perjuangan (Struggle Council). This opposition coalition campaigned for what was called the “seven pillars of the Indonesian revolution,” which were, among other things, “total independence,” the creation of a people’s government, army, as well as the confiscation and collective management of European-owned industries and plantations.4 At the time, political and ideological differences in Indonesia were still blurred and in flux. The question of whether to negotiate an end to the war structured public debate. Diplomacy divided political forces on all sides, bringing the pragmatic, who were convinced of the need to negotiate with the former colonial masters, into opposition with the hard-liners who rejected any such concessions. This recalcitrant, anticolonial nationalism often united parts of the communist and Islamic movements. And there was undoubtedly more to this linkage than a simple strategic convergence. Shared ideals of social justice and naive calls for a new world order animated both parties. However, the emergence of the Cold War on the Indonesian political scene brought differences into focus. Beginning in September 1947, the growing antagonism between the “capitalist” and “communist” blocs considerably reduced the political room for maneuver for the Islamic movement in Indonesia. Nationalist leaders active on the diplomatic stage noted that it was increasingly difficult to stay out of the intensifying ideological confrontation between the two blocs. For instance, when Sjafruddin Prawiranegara, one of the Masjumi leaders, participated in the activities of the Economic Council for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) held in 1947 in Manila, he observed that his Indonesian colleagues and himself were generally regarded as communists by many of the other delegations. Annoyed, he tried to clarify the relationship between communism and Islam in a booklet entitled Politics and Our Democracy, published in Yogyakarta in 1948. Acknowledging the confused character of Indonesian politics—which had led Masjumi to collaborate with the Communist Party within the Persatuan Perjuangan—Prawiranegara called on political parties to purify themselves, so that each member would be in full agreement with his party’s specific line.5 At the same time, especially within the youth movements, the growing rift between Masjumi and Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) sympathizers was increasingly obvious.6 This polarization of the communists from the non-communists was not, of course, specific to Indonesia. And to a large extent, it was related to the rapidly changing international climate. The birth of the blocs, symbolized by the

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formulation of the “Jdanov doctrine” during the autumn of 1947, triggered similar ruptures on the peripheries of the communist world and throughout the South. Before the end of the year, the constitution of a powerful Moscoworiented wing within the Indonesian left had taken shape. Schisms within the Socialist Party also continued to grow. Amir Sjariffudin, for example, aligned his positions increasingly on Moscow’s policies. He led the party and its allies (gathered within the Sajap Kiri coalition) in a systematic opposition to the Hatta government. This attitude led Sjahrir’s partisans to withdraw from the Partai Socialis and Sajap Kiri and to create their own party (the Partai Socialis Indonesia), which supported the Hatta cabinet in February 1948. Shortly thereafter, Amir Sjariffudin responded by creating a new coalition—the Front Demokrasi Rakjat (FDR, People’s Democratic Front). The army—in particular the auxiliary forces of the TNI-Masjarakat—and the large trade-union Sentral Organisasi Buruh Seluruh Indonesia (All-Indonesian Labor Union) served as its pillars. Taking advantage of the Dutch blockade, which prevented the circulation of all books and newspapers from the outside, communist publications, undoubtedly subsidized to some extent by Moscow, spread their ideas throughout the cities of the reduced Republican territory.7 In August 1948, Musso, a prestigious communist leader of the prewar period, returned to Indonesia from Prague and took over the direction of the PKI.8 Under his rule, the proletarian party (Murba) and the Socialist Party of Amir Sjariffudin decided to join with the PKI, thus ensuring Musso control of the FDR. In a few weeks, Musso had accomplished his mission of bringing the PKI into line with other parts of the Soviet-controlled world communist movement.9 During the summer of 1948, numerous incidents divided the armed forces of various factions. Then in early September major confrontations occurred. In Surakarta, the government exploited in-fighting in order to expel communist troops from the city on September 17.10 This expulsion encouraged certain procommunist officers to act. Without warning the PKI’s national leaders, these officers implemented the military phase of a plan articulated in June within the FDR. On September 18, 1948, they seized the Javanese town of Madiun and two days later, they formed a revolutionary government in this city under Amir Sjariffuddin’s leadership.11 However, poorly prepared, the rebellion failed to obtain the expected popular support; the forces of the Republican government (led by Sjarhir) rapidly recovered control of Madiun as early as September 30. Leaving Madiun, the communist troops hoped to be able to find shelter in the mountains where they could await the next Dutch attack, thought to be imminent. On the run from governmental troops, they killed many civil servants as a show of their hatred of the republican state. Members of Masjumi were the prime targets of these aggressions.12 On December 7,

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1948, the army general staff announced the end of the rebellion. With the death of its main leaders, Musso and Amir Sjarifuddin, the Indonesian communist movement was leaderless. The revolt of Madiun—a traumatic juncture in republican history—signaled the Cold War’s brutal eruption in Indonesia. Whereas the logic of liberation had so far shaped the political life of the country, from this point the question of communism became its principal structuring element. This shift was particularly the case within political Islam. The 1948 turning point contributed to the renunciation of the Masjumi’s revolutionary identity. Its virulent anticommunism brought it effectively closer to a Western conception of democracy. From that moment, political Islam and communism set themselves up as antithetic models in Indonesian politics.

Ideological Oppositions and Political Quarrels Until 1950, the PIK, which narrowly escaped being outlawed after the failed Madiun revolt, conducted both official and clandestine activities. An illegal and secret PKI directed the legal Communist Party as well as other “umbrella” parties, including the Indonesian Workers Party (Partai Buruh Indonesia) and the Socialist Party (Partai Sosialis, a vestige of Amir Sjarifuddin’s organization). Then, in January 1951, a new team, animated by three young leaders— D.N. Aidit, M.H. Lukman, and Njoto—took over the Politburo of the PKI. These three men, who remained at the head of the party until 1965, reoriented the party’s strategy, promoting mass membership drives and dedicated themselves to building a united front with other “anti-imperialist” forces.13 The subsequent, dramatic resurgence of the PKI—which until then had only a few thousand members—greatly worried Masjumi. At this time, in 1951, the government was led by Soekiman Wirjosandjojo, one of the prominent leaders of the Muslim Party. He moved to arrest the communist leaders, thereby forcing them into hiding for several months. During this period, communist leaders became aware of the need to create a union with other political forces in order to protect themselves from new attacks of this kind. In this new view, the Partai Nasional Indonesia (Indonesian National Party [PNI], close to the president) and President Soekarno appeared to be potential allies against the Masjumi.14 The PKI began to draw itself ever closer to the presidential doctrine and to present a tolerant face, especially when it came to the religious question. The PKI had to agree to the first principle of the state ideology, the Pancasila—“the belief in a single God.” Thus, even D.N. Aidit could declare that Indonesia was to be “a garden where all religions and political convictions would live in harmony and would fight together to crush imperialism.”15

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In response, the Masjumi anticommunist propaganda machine presented what the Islamic party saw as the true face of communism. Leaders of the Muslim party tirelessly implored their followers to take a close look at the founding texts of the enemy‘s doctrine. In 1952, for instance, Mohammad Natsir, the Masjumi’s president, invited his fellows to read Lenin’s teachings on the elimination of the adversaries of the revolution.16 In a March 1954 electoral meeting, Jusuf Wibisono, member of the central direction of the Muslim party, shared his experiences of the communism threat: I really looked deeply into the problem of Communism. I even went to Moscow, its heartland. And, for what I know of the principles of Marx, I do not see how religion could reach a compromise with Communism.17 The attacks on the PKI were not entirely limited to religious questions. In a meeting held a few weeks later in Yogyakarta, the same Jusuf Wibisono, sought to show the totalitarian aspect of the Soviet model: Islam wishes to form a democratic State, whereas the Communists want [to create] a dictatorial State. That is what the Communist Party example illustrates. Thus, in Russia the parties considered as opposition parties are not that, because their leaders are in prison, the freedom of the press does not exist; there is only Isvestia and Pravda.18 Every one of the PKI leaders’ speeches was carefully analyzed. Tracking contradictions, the Masjumi’s press organs denounced the communists’ “doublespeak.” Despite their denials, Masjumi accused them of distorting the true nature of Pancasila. Besides the religious issue, the problem of foreign relations was another subject of endless debate. Masjumi accused the PKI of serving as the auxiliary of its Russian and Chinese masters. Lurking behind the PKI’s “old song” (lagu lama) promising an original way for their country, was the terrible mask of totalitarianism.19 One of the arguments most commonly used against the PKI was the presence during its meetings of portraits of foreign communist leaders. In July 1954, during a meeting of Masjumi in Jember (east Java), a local leader, Muchtar Chazaly, set out to prove to his audience that the PKI was the fifth column of the Soviet Union. As he asked his listeners rhetorically: Is there anybody here who owns a portrait of Eisenhower? Of course, everyone gave a negative answer. Chazaly concluded:

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It is thus clear that Masjumi and the Moslem community are not agents of America as the Communists claim. But what is clear too, is that the PKI is the agent of foreign countries as it often displays portraits of foreign communist leaders like Malenkov, Mao Tse Toung and others.20 Masjumi foreign policy was founded on the generous principle of “friendship with all nations, and particularly with those founded on the belief in God

The PKI severs the principle of one God from the rest of the Pancasila. Hikmah, June 26, 1954.

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In homage to the vacant seat of Malenkov and Mao. Hikmah, April 10, 1954.

and democracy.”21 With communist countries fulfilling neither of these two conditions, such friendship was obviously difficult. However, the Moslem party, basing itself on the premise of neutrality, never dared formally to oppose diplomatic relations with the communist bloc. Masjumi’s policy consisted of throwing up as many obstacles as possible to the establishment of diplomatic relations with communist countries, without advancing any real opposition in principle. The possibility of an exchange of ambassadors between Indonesia and the Soviet Union was first evoked in September 1950, shortly after Indonesia formally obtained its independence. In his investiture speech, Mohammad Natsir asserted that he had no objection to moving forward with relations with Moscow, but added “that negotiations must still be organized between our two countries in connection regarding the technical questions.”22 The government he was leading and then the one headed by Soekiman (also a Masjumi leader), did not manage to settle these “technical questions.” In opposition to this obvious policy of obstruction, the partisans of the establishment of diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union took issue. In April 1953, the PNI’s Wilopo, then prime minister, opened negotiations on this question with Moscow. Despite the firm opposition of Masjumi’s members in Parliament, an Indonesian embassy was opened in Moscow in April 1954.23

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Parallel to these accusations, communists and some members of the nationalist party (PNI) were convinced that the Muslim party was too committed to the United States. In fact, the question of relations with the United States was much more complex and never obtained the same consensus within Masjumi as did the question of opposing communism. On the contrary, the relations between Indonesia and the United States were at the center of one of the most serious crises the Masjumi had to face during the period under study. In 1951, the Soekiman government sent its foreign minister, Ahmad Subardjo, to the San Francisco conference to sign the peace treaty with Japan. However, the conference was also considered to be a means by which the United States sought to build a new alliance in the region. Masjumi’s leadership had not yet managed to establish a common position concerning the implications of the San Francisco treaty. Gathered around Prime Minister Soekiman, the partisans of the treaty declared that it would contribute to stabilizing the Pacific region, and thereby thwart the spread of communism. Because Indonesia was unable to create a “Third Force” in Asia, it was argued, the government should join the Western camp and subscribe to its democratic ideology, which was much closer to Pancasila and Islam than to communism. Such adhesion, according to Soekiman, did not mean giving up an independent foreign policy (see also chapter two in this volume). To these political arguments, Minister of Finance Jusuf Wibisono added economic ones. For him, the signature of the treaty would allow Indonesia to obtain from Japan the payment of war damages and an agreement to limit exports to Indonesia. But within the party, the Natsir wing was opposed to the signature of the treaty. For Mohamad Roem, the proposed text did not guarantee the stability of the area in the future. By prolonging the economic and military supervision of Western powers over Japan, it was likely to lead to new and violent actions. Instead of letting this multilateral agreement place Indonesia in the Western camp, Roem pleaded for the signature of a bilateral treaty with Japan. This was considered to be a solution that would preserve the chances of cooperation with India and Burma, two countries that had refused to send representatives to San Francisco. In addition to Roem’s argument, Sjafruddin Prawiranegara explained why, insofar as Indonesia had never been at war with Japan, it did not have to sign a peace treaty with this nation but could nonetheless claim war damages.24 After heated discussions, the prime minister’s position prevailed. On September 6, Masjumi allowed the government to sign the San Francisco treaty. But the polemics continued. During his stay in the United States, Foreign Minister Subardjo had begun talks with Secretary of State Dean Acheson in

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connection with U.S. assistance to his country. Back in Jakarta, he continued these negotiations with the ambassador, Merle Cochran. Hitherto, U.S. assistance to Indonesia had been based on an agreement of simple economic and technical cooperation. Anxious to contain American pressure, in October 1950, the Natsir government rejected an offer of military aid.25 At the heart of the discussions between Subardjo and Cochran was the question of continuing U.S. financial assistance to Indonesia within the framework of the Mutual Security Act (MSA), which had recently been adopted by Washington. In theory, the beneficiary countries of American aid could choose between two solutions set out in Articles 511a and 511b of the MSA. The first one (511a) was the most constraining as it required the alignment of the local country’s defense policy to that of the United States. The second one (511b) indicated much vaguer obligations—for example, the recipient country was only supposed to join in peace promotion efforts and to take part in jointly decided actions in order to reduce international tensions.26 On January 5, 1952, Subardjo signed the agreement on the basis of Article 511a. Initially held secret, the protocol was made public in early February, causing a considerable stir in the political community. Within Masjumi, Natsir’s partisans were furious and demanded an exceptional meeting of the top leadership. Undoubtedly surprised by the virulence of the reactions, Soekiman claimed that he had not been informed of the initiative of his foreign minister. The leadership of Masjumi then decided “to refuse to recognize responsibility for this signature.”27 On February 21, Subardjo resigned, but most of the parties continued to ask for the resignation of the entire government. Two days later, Soekiman resigned. Subardjo was a very mysterious character without real backing within the party except that of Soekiman. While it suggests nonetheless the likelihood of U.S. maneuvering to ensure the services of the Muslim party, it also shows that the resistance of the majority of its leaders, who despite their visceral anticommunism, did not automatically align themselves blindly with U.S. policy.

Masjumi and the Bandung Conference: Big and Small History Masjumi policy toward countries belonging to neither of the two blocs was structured around two key principles: a natural solidarity with the other Moslem nations and a prudent neutralism (wary of any outside recuperation). Within Masjumi, these two principles guided discussion on the 1955 Bandung Afro-Asian conference. But most important was the fact that the idea of this summit had been suggested by Prime Minister Ali Sastroamidjo (from the nationalist party, PNI) during a period of opposition for Masjumi. For this reason, the conference received a cautious welcome from the Muslim party. Con-

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sidering the announced presence of a Chinese delegation and the cordial relationships between the Prime Minister and the PKI, Masjumi leaders pointed out the risk of seeing the conference confined to a conventional condemnation of Western imperialism as opposed to the edification of balanced neutralism.28 Masjumi feared above all the risk of seeing the PNI benefit from a major international success a few months before the general elections. Such reasons account for the strange impression aroused on reading accounts in the Masjumi press about the conference. Except for a few brief, official declarations, the most elaborate comment of the conference results was developed in Abadi by Rusjad Nurdin, secretary for the west Java Masjumi. Writing on one of the final resolutions, the condemnation of all forms of colonization, he underlined that communism was a particular case in point. For him, proof of Soviet colonialism was the presence in Bandung of representatives of Moslem Turkestan and Buddhist Kalmuk, two minorities oppressed by the USSR.29 The embarrassment of Masjumi partisans in front of this major success of the Ali government was perfectly illustrated by the Abadi coverage of the event. While devoting limited space to the debates, the Moslem daily newspaper broadly echoed the polemics stemming from what was called the “hospitality committee.” At the end of the conference, Nur el Ibrahimy, a Masjumi member of Parliament, questioned the government about this organization which was in charge of providing for the “carnal needs” (kebutuhan jang nakal) of the conference guests.30 Confronted with the government’s vigorous denials, Abadi devoted long articles to this business, and published a copy of a form issued by the committee. While the name of the happy recipient was masked, it contained in English the following: “Hand this ticket over to the one you like. If not ‘used,’ please return this to the hospitality committee.”31 During the following weeks, such testimonies and harsh condemnations from Islamic organizations were obviously a means to hide the undeniable success of the Bandung conference. In sum, the Muslim Party’s worldview confirmed its very strong Western identity at the time. As illustrated by the evolution of the party between 1945 and 1948, its virulent anticommunism was grounded more on strategic considerations than on religious ones. Islam never seemed the source of direct inspiration for precise actions. The Masjumi leaders’ main political reference points were Western ones and, beyond a proclaimed neutralism, they had clearly chosen a side the Cold War arena. This support to the Western block did not mean, however, complete alignment on American policy, as the Subardjo affair showed. Despite frequent accusations leveled by the Indonesian leftist press, historians have not yet found any evidence of American assistance to Masjumi.32 But the participation of a few top Masjumi leaders in the Pemer-

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intah Revolusioner Republik Indonesia (Revolutionary Government of the Indonesian Republic) revolt almost led the United States into what could have been one of the most significant armed interventions since World War II in Asia.

From Political to Physical Confrontation: The Hot Cold War, 1956–1965 In September and December 1955, the first general elections since the proclamation of national independence ten years earlier were held. Usually considered as the unquestioned favorite, Masjumi obtained a very disappointing 20 percent of the vote, lagging behind its longtime rival, the PNI (22 percent), and just ahead of the Islamic traditionalist party (Nadhlalatul Ulama, 18 percent, which had split from Masjumi three years before), and not so far ahead of its worst enemy, the PKI (16 percent).33 Confirming this division of the already fractious Indonesian political landscape, the election results placed the country in a political dead end. Although the voters created the situation, an important proportion of them blamed the political blockage on a weakened political class. Exploiting this general mind-set, some leaders advocated a drastic change in the rules and pushed the debate out of the parliamentary arena and into the public one. In the “outer islands” (i.e., outside of Java and Madura), a powerful popular current, encouraged by officers who had gradually taken the control of various economic sectors, increasingly and adamantly called for a more equitable distribution of income between Jakarta and the outer regions. At the same time, President Soekarno, who had lost a part of his powers under the 1950 provisional constitution, tried to rally around his person an increasingly fragile national unity and restore Indonesia’s place on the international scene. He particularly wished to see the PKI associated with the government. To this end, he visited Moscow in September 1956, and signed a joint declaration noting the common views between the two countries in most areas. A few weeks later he gave particulars on his grand strategy. Denouncing what he described as the “disease of parties,” he expressed his wish “to bury them” in order to set up a “guided democracy” (demokrasi terpimpin) that was more adapted to the Indonesian particularities.34 In June 1957, the government announced the formation of the national council desired by the president. The “functional groups,” symbolizing the diversity of Indonesian society (workers, young people, peasants, women, members of the 1945 generation, Moslem and Christian leaders, Hindu religious, etc.), and representatives of the regions formed the majority of the new parliament. Despite the absence of party formal delegates,35 the composition of the coun-

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President Soekarno unveils his project to dissolve the parties. Hikmah, November 3, 1956.

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cil also reflected the political balance that Soekarno so desired. Masjumi was the one party without any sympathizers in the new institution; the PNI and PKI shared the seats allotted to peasants, workers, young people, and journalists, and the NU monopolized the seats representing the ulamas (religious leaders). Masjumi’s first objection to the presidential plan was related to the nature of the democratic regime. As explained by Mohammad Natsir on several occasions, democracy knew neither East nor West, but rather represented a universal value. The second objection was related to the PKI’s likely participation in the government. Masjumi criticisms of communism were from this moment directed against the president himself. Thus, in a long article published on March 8, Natsir intended once again to show the irreducible opposition between communism and democracy. Pointing out the hard living conditions in the socialist countries (lack of fundamental freedoms, an atmosphere of terror and ceaseless denunciations), he warned his compatriots against the ambitions of the PKI, the “Trojan horse” (Kuda Troye) of the dictatorship. With a transparent allusion to the Soekarno’s proposals, he denounced the semantic degradation that communists—and now President Soekarno—operated around the word “democracy”: “The term ‘democracy’ even seems suspect in the eyes of the Communists. To qualify their system of government based on a dictatorial principle, they use the phrase ‘people’s democracy.’”36 Over a period of months, the debate led to the political marginalization of Masjumi. Courageous and uncompromising refusal to abandon parliamentary democracy transformed its leaders into political pariahs. The regionalist conflict that arose at the same time seemed to give them a new opportunity to resist. These additionalcrises led to a major confrontation to which the Cold War could have given a much more dramatic dimension. Since the early 1950s, the regular reduction of military budgets had led certain regional commanders (panglima) to seek new funds. In partnership with local business circles, they set up parallel channels for exporting raw materials whose profits had so far gone directly to Jakarta. Because of inflation and because of the rigidity of official import-export networks, the populations of the outer islands were greatly deprived of the benefits of their raw materials, minerals, and agricultural products (representing nearly 70 percent of the country’s total exports). The creation of a parallel economy by the officers thus represented a welcome improvement to the incomes of these regions’ inhabitants. However, in November 1956, the civil and military central authorities endeavored to put these affairs in good order and to this end elaborated a personnel transfer plan for regional commanders. A segment of the officers threatened by the army’s staff project and backed by the local population refused to obey. On December 20, 1956, Lt. Colonel Ahmad Husein, head of “Banteng

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council” (from the name of the division he commanded), seized power in central Sumatra. Two days later, Colonel Simbolon, commander of North Sumatra, announced that he did not acknowledge any longer the authority of the Ali Sastroamidjojo government. The regionalist rebellion then spread to eastern Indonesia. On March 2, 1957, in Makassar (Sulawesi), the military commander of this area, Lt. Colonel Sumual, announced that he had joined the movement and published a “charter of the common struggle,” which showed considerable similarity to the Masjumi political program: five-year development scheme for the region, a new deal for export profits, and the restoration of the Dwitunggal (collaboration between Vice President Mohammad Hatta and President Soekarno).37 Thereafter, a period of “total struggle” (perjuangan semesta) began for the insurrectionists, giving its name to the Permesta (an acronym for total struggle) movement. Two factors led some Masjumi leaders to join the rebellion. First, the Muslim party was the natural representative of the outer islands, as the elections results had shown.38 The second was linked to the political atmosphere in the capital: At the end of 1957, the question of West New Guinea inaugurated a new crisis between Indonesia and the former colonizer. The recovery of this area of the archipelago, still under Dutch sovereignty, was considered by Soekarno to be one of the rare causes likely to gather the nation behind him. Exasperated by repeated failures in the negotiations, the trade unions close to the PNI and PKI took control of large parts of Dutch plantations and companies. On December 5, the Ministry of Justice ordered the expulsion of some 46,000 Netherlanders living in Indonesia. The Djuanda prime minister then seemed overwhelmed by events largely controlled from the presidential palace. And the Masjumi president warned his fellow citizens: The West Irian question became the tool of a vast scheme . . . breaking the existing bonds between Indonesia and the Western democracies; using all the economic and political consequences of this affair as a pretext to lead Indonesia towards the Russian block.”39 For Natsir, this new alliance policy was based on what was a radical change in the political balance in Indonesia: In the country, the Communist Party benefits from exceptional services and sees its position ensured and guaranteed in the government more strongly every day while the other groups are eliminated one after another by all stratagems.40 According to Natsir, it was thus the famous “salami tactics”—described ten years earlier by the Hungarian Mathias Rakosi—that one saw at work in the

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archipelago. This very dark vision of the future of the Republic of Indonesia, with President Soekarno portrayed as the more or less deceived instrument of the Communist Party in its advance toward world power, was largely due to the personal situation of Natsir when he wrote these lines. Actually, the leaders of Masjumi in Jakarta who had expressed themselves publicly against the confiscation campaign became targets of a growing intimidation campaign, carried out by groups of young people close to the PNI and PKI. Mohammad Natsir, Sjafruddin Prawiranegara, and Boerhanoeddin Harahap were thus victims of intimidation attempts and received numerous threats. As a result, they became increasingly marginalized, without any control over the course of events in the capital. In January 1958, on the invitation of Lt. Colonel Husein, one of the military officers already engaged in the PRRI rebellion, moved to Sungai Dareh, a small locality of central Sumatra.41 As Natsir’s texts quoted above and as an open letter of Sjafruddin Prawiranegara to the president42 testified, their visceral anticommunism explained the rebellion of these authentic democrats. It was favored—not to say prepared—by the implication of local sections of the Moslem party in the protest movement that had begun a few months earlier. As early as October 1957, regional Masjumi leaders had taken part in the creation, in Bukittinggi (West Sumatra), of the United Anticommunist Movement (Gerakan Bersama Anti-Komunisme) directed by Colonel Djambek, who was one of the rebel officers.43 On February 10, 1958, Lt. Colonel Husein sent, in the name of Dewan Perjuangan, an ultimatum to the government. It required the resignation of the Djuanda cabinet in five days, the nomination of Mohammed Hatta and the sultan of Yogyakarta to form a new government, and the guarantee that the Parliament and the president would allow the new government to remain in function until the next elections. The following day, the government refused the request and the army commander Abdul Haris Nasution ordered the immediate arrest of the rebellious soldiers. With the expiration of the ultimatum on February 15, 1958, the rebels announced formation of the Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Indonesia (Pemerintah Revolusioner Republik Indonesia [PRRI]).44 On February 21, the Indonesian air force launched a vast bombing campaign of Padang and Bukittinggi, the two towns of Sumatra where the rebels had installed their headquarters, and on Manado, capital of North Sulawesi. In June, the last bastion of PRRI-Permesta fell. In just four months the rebellion had been militarily quashed. The rapidity of their rout pointed up the rebels’ inadequate military preparedness, but it also indicated the failure of their alliance politics. Their ultimatum had been partly justified by the very strong support they had received from the United States, starting

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in the fall of 1957. At this time, President Eisenhower, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and his brother and the director of the CIA, Allen Dulles, were deeply worried about the spread of communism in Indonesia. For that reason, they launched their country in what Audrey Kahin and George Kahin have qualified as “the most important American operation since WW II.”45 As early as November 1957, the insurrectionists took advantage of significant shipments of American weapons. The boats and submarines in charge of these operations secretly evacuated many of these soldiers to training camps in the American bases of Okinawa, Saipan, and Guam. In December, after the seizure of Dutch assets, the American policy supporting the rebels was even more evident. For example, elements of the Navy’s third division were sent off the coast of Sumatra with U.S. backing. Of course, such measures reinforced the intransigence of the rebellious soldiers. On February 11, 1958, shortly after the ultimatum sent by Dewan Perdjuangan to Jakarta, Secretary of State Dulles publicly criticized President Soekarno and implicitly approved the formation of a rebel government. The CIA was indeed persuaded that the movement would obtain the support of all forces which were in disagreement with the central government, that is to say, the Moluccas fighters, the Darul Islam Islamic rebellion and even certain elements of the prestigious Siliwangi division. The American authorities were all the more convinced of the success of the rebellion given that the majority of Indonesia’s neighbors did not hide their sympathies for the rebellion. Some, like Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Malaysia, had already helped rebels by providing funds and military equipment. After the proclamation of the PRRI, the United States reinforced their military aid to the plotters. In particular, they provided important air support to Sulawesi.46 They, however, never acceded to the more political demands of the government of Sumatra aiming, on the one hand, to recognize the PRRI as the legitimate authority in Indonesia and, on the other hand, to freeze the government’s assets in American banks. The Americans in charge were led to make a complete turnabout in the PRRI affair for two reasons. Contrary to their hopes, the rebellion did not manage to organize the discontented residents of all the “outer islands.” It remained confined to the three areas of Sumatra—Central Sumatra, South of Tapanuli, and Jambi—and to the provinces of Central Sulawesi and North Sulawesi. Moreover, the quick and effective reaction of the Jakarta authorities took the Americans by surprise. The weak resistance of the rebels—who practically gave up Medan and then Padang without fighting—disappointed them too. In late April 1958, a new ambassador, Howard Jones, was named to Jakarta with orders to erase the disastrous impression produced by U.S. intervention and to preserve American in-

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fluence in the country.47 His steps were welcomed by Djuanda, Soekarno, and Nasution, who were anxious to eliminate the risk of U.S. intervention in Sumatra (part of Seventh Fleet was still passing near the coast). As early as May 20, Secretary of State Dulles initiated the new policy by making a declaration that condemned any intervention in favor of the rebels. Shortly thereafter, a sale contract of weapons was concluded with the Indonesian government.48 Without diplomatic backing, the military failure became a political disaster. As Barbara Harvey has underlined, the PRRI-Permesta favored the evolution of a regime against which the rebels claimed to be fighting: “The central power was reinforced to the detriment of local autonomy; radical nationalism supplanted moderate pragmatism; the influence of Soekarno and of the PKI increased to the detriment of that of Hatta and Masjumi.”49 Indeed, the Masjumi leaders’ participation in the PRRI rebellion allowed President Soekarno to get rid of the one political force capable of opposing his new political vision. In early September 1960, Masjumi was forced to disband, under the threat of a presidential ban. Its leaders, even those who did not participate in the rebellion, were arrested during the following months.

Conclusion In order to describe the impact of the Cold War on Indonesia, one can use the metaphor of the French Orientalist, Paul Mus, who compared the influence of India and China on Southeast Asia to civilizational tectonic plates that change the original (Southeast Asian) stratum. In similar ways, the pressure linked to the worldwide ideological and strategic conflict facilitated the metamorphosis of these two political poles in Indonesia represented by Islam and communism, and led them oftentimes well beyond their original ideological foundations. Through the Masjumi, political Islam evolved toward an increasingly intransigent defense of a Western-style parliamentary democracy, as well as serving as the advocate of an important decentralization if not a certain kind of federalism. As for communism, it became with the PKI the defender of a Javanese conception of the Indonesian spatial entity and of a corporatist regime, desired by Soekarno and founded on the negation of all that was class struggle. By hardening and radicalizing these identities, the Cold War rendered impossible the necessary compromises for any kind of political life. In so doing, it exacerbated the crisis of the youth, from which the Indonesian Republic had suffered, and led it down the dangerous road of increasingly violent confrontations, ones which would lead to the disappearance of democracy in the archipelago between 1960 and 1999.

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Notes 1. These five principles are belief in one supreme God; humanitarianism; nationalism expressed in the unity of Indonesia; consultative democracy; and social justice. 2. On the Pancasila ideology, see Marcel Bonnef, et al., Pantjasila, trente années de débats politiques en Indonésie (Paris: Edition de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, 1980). 3. For a detailed description of the Indonesian political scene, see the classics of George McTurnan Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1952); and Benedict R. R. O’G. Anderson, Java in a Time of Revolution: Occupation and Resistance, 1944–1946 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972). 4. The first Masjumi Congress, held in Solo (February 10–13, 1946), carried on the Dewan Perjuangan program without reference to opposition coalitions. 5. Sjafruddin Prawiranegara, Politik dan Demokrasi Kita (Yogyakarta: N.p., 1948). 6. Thus, during spring 1947, relations deteriorated between the movement of the young Indonesian Moslems (GPII, near Masjumi) and the youth movements of Marxist inspiration. In May, during the second Republic of Indonesia Youth Congress (Badan Kongres Pemuda Republik Indonesia, BKPRI), the GPII announced that it would withdraw from this organization. In August, the GPII formed with other youth organizations (Pemuda Demokrat, Pemuda Kristen, and others) a Youth National Front (Front National Pemuda) whose GPII leader became president. Lukman Hakiem, Perjalan mencari keadilan dan persatuan: Biografi Dr Anwar Harjono (Jakarta: Media Da’wah, 1993), 109–10. 7. Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia, 253. 8. Born in Kediri east Java, in 1897, Musso personified the first divorce between communism and Islam in Indonesia. In the earliest years of the nationalist movement, Musso had been closely involved in Sarekat Islam (he lived with Soekarno and Alimin at Sarekat Islam leader Tjokroaminoto’s house). But, in 1921, at the time of the PKI split with the SI, Musso joined the communists and was soon involved in the planning that led to the unsuccessful communist revolt against the Dutch in 1926 and 1927. Ann Swift, The Road to Madiun: The Indonesian Communist Uprising of 1948, Cornell Modern Indonesia Project, Monograph Series (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), 51–52. 9. Indonesia at this time was the only country in Southeast Asia where the Communist Party was not fully in harmony with the two camps’ line. Ruth McVey, The Soviet View of the Indonesian Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1957), 54. 10. Numerous clashes occurred between troops favorable to the FDR (Pesindo and ALRI division Suadi IV) and the prestigious Siliwangi division (which had at this time a pronounced pro-U.S. orientation). Swift, The Road to Madiun, 68–71. 11. Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia, 290. 12. Deliar Noer, Partai Islam di pentas nasional (Jakarata: Pustaka Utama Grafiti, 1987). 13. Françoise Cayrac-Blanchard, Le parti communiste indonésien (Paris: Armand Colin, 1973), 59–62. 14. Ibid., 104.

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15. Ibid., 121. 16. Abadi, March 1, 1952. Abadi was the Masjumi’s newspaper. 17. Abadi, March 30, 1954. 18. Abadi, July 6, 1954. 19. On November 10, 1955, Abadi published declarations of D.N. Aidit arguing that the PKI did not wish that the Republic of the Proclamation (Republik Proklamasi) be transformed into an “Islamic State or a State of Darul Islam” (Negara Islam atau Negara Darul Islam), nor did it intend to build a communist State (Negara komunis). The Moslem daily newspaper adds that “Communist leaders always play the same old song but people know well what the PKI actually wants.” 20. Abadi, July 22, 1954. 21. Announced in the Masjumi action program in 1949. 22. Kementarian Penerangan R.I., Membangun diantagra tumpukan puing dan pertumbuhan. Keterangan Pemerintah diutjapkan oleh Perdana Menteri Mohammad Natsir dimuka sidang Dewan Perwakilan Rakjat Sementara, 10 oktober 1950, Jakarta, 1950, 30. 23. By the government of the PNI Ali Sastroamidjojo, the former cabinet, led by Masjumi Boeranoeddin Harahap having blocked the project during his mandate. 24. The most complete report of these debates can be founded in Berita Masjumi, September 21, 1951. 25. Herbert Feith, The Decline of the Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1962), 175. 26. For more details on these articles, see Herbert Feith, The Decline of Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia, 199–200. The MSA full text was published in Abadi, February 2, 1952. 27. Natsir himself declared that the decision of the cabinet to be maintained “was not comprehensible.” Abadi, February 22, 1952. 28. See, for example, the interview of Mohamad Roem published by Abadi, December 23, 1954. 29. Abadi, April 28, 1955. 30. Abadi, May 2, 1945. 31. Abadi, May 5, 1955. 32. Audrey and George Kahin who obtained access to CIA archives found no trace of such assistance. Subversion as Foreign Policy: The Secret Eisenhower and Dulles Debacle in Indonesia (New York: New Press, 1995). 33. For detailed results, see Herbert Feith, The Indonesian Elections of 1955 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1957). 34. See Herbert Feith’s classic analysis in The Decline of Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia, and in “Dynamics of Guided Democracy,” in Ruth McVey, Indonesia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1963). 35. A category added in 1959. 36. Abadi, March 8, 1957. 37. Barbara S. Harvey, Permesta: Half a Rebellion (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), 60. 38. Masjumi went ahead in all the “outer islands” except East Nusa Tenggara. In the regions implicated in the rebellion, it obtained scores of more than 50 percent. 39. This Natsir’s article was initially published by the Palembang’s newspaper

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Batanghari Sembilan on January 29, 1958, and then republished in Abadi on February 1, 1958. 40. Ibid. 41. For an account of the Masjumi leaders’ journey, see Badruzzaman Busjairi, Boerhanoeddin Harahap Pilar Demokrasi, 134–50; Ajip Rosidi, Syafruddin Prawiranegara Lebih Takut Kepada Allah SWT (Jakarta: Inti Idayu Pers, 1986), 190–208; Yusril Ihza, “Prolog PRRI dan keterlibatan Natsir,” in Anshary H. Endang Saifuddin and Rais M. Amien, eds., Pak Natsir 80 Tahun, buku pertama, Pandangan dan Penilaian Generasi Muda (Jakarta: Media Da’wah, 1988), 145–61. 42. Open letter published in Abadi, January 23, 1958. 43. Abadi, October 8 and 10, 1957. 44. Sjafruddin Prawiranegara was the PRRI prime minister, Boerhanoeddin Harahap was in charge of defense and justice, and Mohammad Natsir was the government spokesman. It seems, however, that the Masjumi leaders had not been consulted during the formation of this cabinet: The document that announced it carried only Lt. Colonel Husein’s signature. 45. Audrey R. and George McTurnan Kahin, Subversion as Foreign Policy: The Secret Eisenhower and Dulles Debacle in Indonesia (New York: New Press, 1995), 8. 46. Ibid., 167. 47. The capture in May of an American pilot, A.L. Pope, in Ambon endangered the secrecy of the operation, which, up to that point, was unknown to the American public, and thus added urgency to the new ambassador’s task. 48. Kahin and Kahin, Subversion as Foreign Policy, 183. 49. Harvey, Permesta, 150.

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15. The Diplomacy of Personalism: Civilization, Culture, and the Cold War in the Foreign Policy of Ngo Dinh Diem Edward Miller

I

n life and in death, Ngo Dinh Diem has been a controversial figure. As the leader of South Vietnam from 1954 to 1963, Diem inspired both effusive praise and withering criticism. Many in Vietnam and elsewhere admired Diem for his unexpected success in blocking a communist takeover of South Vietnam following the end of the first Indochina War in 1954. Yet Diem also came to be reviled both at home and abroad for his autocratic style of rule, and his 1963 ouster and assassination was welcomed by many of his former supporters and allies. Today, more than four decades after his death, Diem’s qualities as a leader and the merits of his policies are still hotly debated by historians and others. In these debates, surprisingly little attention has been paid to Diem’s thinking about foreign affairs and diplomacy. Of course, many scholars have examined Diem’s relations with the United States, his most important ally; a few authors have also considered his dealings with other Western nations such as France and Britain.1 However, even those who have written about Diem’s ties to particular countries have not explored the larger ideas and theories that underlay his policies. Insofar as they have considered the issue at all, historians have usually assumed that Diem’s understanding of foreign affairs was defined by his anticommunism. According to this view, Diem saw contemporary international relations as a straightforward geopolitical struggle between the communist and Western blocs, and his main diplomatic priority was to lend unconditional support to the latter. Wesley Fishel and William Henderson, two U.S. scholars who had known Diem personally, asserted that the Vietnamese leader’s foreign policies were based on blinkered Cold War thinking and a blind hostility to the idea of neutralism:

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Diem approached the conduct of foreign policy armed with certain basic preconceptions. Perhaps most important were convictions as to the necessity, on grounds of realpolitik, for smaller countries to align themselves unequivocally in the cold war; and as to the immorality of nonalignment.2 For Fishel and Henderson, the inflexible nature of Diem’s thinking about the Cold War led him to overemphasize his alliance with the United States, often at the expense of his ties to other newly independent nations in Asia and elsewhere. “Diem . . . opted for the American connection; and once having chosen it, he never thereafter wavered in his basic international orientation.”3 At first glance, the representation of Diem as an unreconstructed Cold Warrior who was committed to all-out alliance with the United States seems persuasive. After all, Diem was a sworn anticommunist, he consistently advocated containment of the communist bloc by the nations of the “free world” (thế giới tự do) and he had been maneuvering to align himself with Washington even before he came to power in 1954. Clearly, the Cold War, geopolitics, and American aid figured prominently in Diem’s foreign policy calculus. Nonetheless, it is going too far to say that Diem based his foreign policies solely on Cold War imperatives, or that he subordinated all other diplomatic concerns to the maintenance of his ties to the United States. In fact, Diem combined his fervent belief about the importance of taking sides in the Cold War with an equally fervent belief about the need for solidarity among the nations of the developing world. And instead of merely following in America’s diplomatic wake, Diem was determined to pursue an independent foreign policy, especially with respect to other noncommunist governments in Asia. In this chapter, I revise the conventional understanding of Ngo Dinh Diem’s foreign policy in two ways. First, I examine the connections between Diem’s thinking about international affairs and his arcane philosophy of “personalism” (chủ nghĩa nhân vị). This examination demonstrates that Diem’s approach to diplomacy was shaped at least as much by ideas about civilization and modernization as by his perceptions of the Cold War. More specifically, Diem was convinced that personalism was a valid alternative to both communist and liberal models of development. He also asserted that Personalism was a distillation of what he referred to as “Asian civilization,” and that the doctrine could therefore be the basis for comity and cooperation among Asian nations. As an analysis of these claims will show, Diem’s thinking on such matters can be described as a form of Orientalism, albeit one in which conventional European notions about “Asia” and “the West” were deployed in new and idiosyncratic ways.

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In the second part of the chapter, I review Diem’s relations with non-communist governments in East, South, and Southeast Asia. Contrary to what some scholars have supposed, Diem did not always eschew ties to neutralist countries; conversely, his relations with other anticommunist regimes in Asia were not defined purely and simply by concerns about communist bloc expansion. Instead, a recurring theme in Diem’s Asian diplomacy was his ambition to promote personalism as a new doctrine for the developing world. In this regard, Diem’s foreign policies in Asia reveal the extraordinary scale and scope of his modernizing vision, and his penchant for thinking in internationalist terms. Yet, these policies also reveal that his internationalism was often undermined by his reliance on hierarchical thinking about cultural differences among Asian nations and ethnic groups. Diem’s record as a foreign policy strategist thus turns out to have been rather more complex and contradictory than scholars have realized.

The Ngo Brothers, Personalism, and “Asian Civilization” Diem’s actions and policies as leader of South Vietnam (known officially after 1955 as the Republic of Vietnam, or RVN) are frequently explained as the result of his affinity for “traditional” beliefs about power, order and society. Modernization, according to this line of interpretation, was antithetical to Diem’s thinking. The most recent edition of a popular U.S. textbook on the Vietnam War insists that Diem “looked backward to an imperial Vietnam that no longer existed” and declares that “he had no blueprint for building a modern nation or mobilizing his people.”4 Careful inspection of the evidence, however, shows that Diem’s words and deeds were not those of a reactionary who aimed merely to restore premodern norms and institutions. On the contrary, Diem clearly considered himself a modernizer, and the ideas that he invoked to defend his policies had a decidedly modern pedigree. Any assessment of Diem’s modernizing ambitions necessarily begins with Personalism, a doctrine that was widely viewed as the official ideology of the Diem government. Although Diem insisted that personalism was not an ideology, he invoked it frequently—some would say ad nauseum—in his public speeches and private conversations and described it as the basis of all his policies. By the late 1950s, references to Personalism had become ubiquitous in RVN official discourse, and Diem frequently described South Vietnam as a “personalist republic.” For all the attention and resources devoted to it, however, the content and meaning of personalism proved elusive. To say that Diemist personalism was dense and abstract is something of an understatement; even some of Diem’s most ardent backers were obliged to admit that

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they never really understood the philosophical details of the doctrine, even after enduring his excruciating attempts to explain it. This impenetrability has led many historians and other commentators to dismiss personalism as a cynical ideological smokescreen. According to this view, the regime concocted the doctrine simply to mask the antimodern qualities of Diem’s ideas and his alleged affinity for premodern forms of Vietnamese rulership.5 These charges are off the mark. Its abstruse and idiosyncratic qualities notwithstanding, personalism reflected Diem’s genuine determination to elaborate a vision of how South Vietnam could and should become a modern nation. It is true that personalism was synthetic insofar as it contained ideas gleaned from a variety of intellectual and philosophical sources—but this hardly proves that it was invented in order to keep modernity at bay. On the contrary, many of the ideas that Diem sought to incorporate into personalism were obviously of contemporary vintage. Moreover, even those aspects of personalism that appeared at first glance to hearken back to “traditional” Vietnamese beliefs and practices had in fact been selected because Diem believed that they would further his modernization agenda. Diem viewed Vietnam’s premodern history not as a template, but as a sort of intellectual rummage sale from which only the most durable and useful ideas should be selected. “We are not going back to a sterile copy of the mandarin past,” he declared, “but we are going to adapt the best of our heritage to the modern situation.”6 For Diem, there was no contradiction between his selective reverence for Vietnamese “tradition” and his understanding of personalism as a transformative and revolutionary ideology. By melding the old with the new, he believed he could forge a doctrine that could guide Vietnam toward its modern destiny. That Diem saw himself as a proponent of modernization is confirmed by the name that he chose for his doctrine. “Personalism” was a deliberate reference to the writings and ideas of Emmanuel Mounier, a lay Catholic philosopher who gained prominence in French intellectual circles during the 1930s. Mounier was a critic of Marxism-Leninism, which he deemed to be excessively materialist and therefore insufficiently attentive to the “spiritual” aspects of human nature. Yet Mounier also found fault with liberal capitalism; he was particularly critical of the liberal penchant for individualism, on the grounds that it fostered selfishness, exploitation, and cynicism. Having rejected both the collectivist ethos of communism and the individualist ethos of capitalism, Mounier then suggested an alternative. He imagined the establishment of a new social order organized around the conception of the “person” (la personne), a category that he defined as incorporating both the spiritual and the material dimensions of human existence. In such a social order, Mounier argued, neither collective considerations nor individual rights would be paramount; instead, individuals

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would balance the pursuit of individual fulfillment against a raft of obligations to the communities in which they lived. In effect, Mounier proposed to avoid the excesses of both communism and liberal capitalism by splitting the difference between them. Such an approach, he believed, could point toward a “third way” (or “middle way”) to social, economic, and political development.7 Mounier’s communitarian vision resonated strongly with Diem. The Vietnamese leader was convinced that the experiences of other countries had demonstrated the danger of hewing too closely to either Marxist or liberal capitalist models of development. While acknowledging that both communism and capitalism “have achieved many technological advances,” Diem insisted that they had also brought “brought many disastrous consequences to the people” of other nations. He therefore embraced the idea of seeking “a third path by which it would be possible to undertake industrial revolution in a quickmoving manner, but while still avoiding the disasters of the other two methods.” In Diem’s view, the pursuit of what he described as “personalist communal progress” was the only strategy that made sense.8 Diem had been introduced to personalism by his younger brother Ngo Dinh Nhu, who first encountered Mounier’s ideas as a student in France during the 1930s. Even more than Diem, Nhu fancied himself an expert on political and social philosophy, and he served his brother as both theorist and confidant. By the early 1950s, Nhu was already outlining what would become the Diemist version of personalism. Like Diem, Nhu coupled his distaste for communism to a deep suspicion of liberal prescriptions for economic, social, and political change. In addition, Nhu imagined that Mounier’s “third way” might serve as the philosophical counterpart to Diem’s efforts during the late 1940s and early 1950s to establish a Vietnamese “Third Force” movement (i.e., a movement that was both anticommunist and anticolonialist). Having thus persuaded himself of personalism’s applicability in Vietnam, Nhu worked relentlessly to promote it. In the years after Diem took power in 1954, Nhu’s influence over government policy steadily increased and the concept of nhan vi—the vaguely Confucian-sounding term that Nhu used as the Vietnamese equivalent of la personne—became one of the key terms in the RVN official lexicon.9 But how, exactly, was personalism to be realized in practice? Mounier’s writings were decidedly lacking in specifics. If the personalist revolution was going to take place, Diem and Nhu would have to fill in the details themselves. This was particularly true in the area of foreign affairs, since Cold War geopolitical realities hardly seemed amenable to the pursuit of a “third way.” On the one hand, the Ngos’ staunch anticommunism precluded the possibility of any accommodation with the nations of the communist bloc and obliged them to rely heavily on the United States and other Western nations for military, eco-

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nomic, and diplomatic support. On the other hand, Diem and Nhu’s suspicions about liberalism did not dispose them to view the Western democracies as models or guides who could be depended on to steer South Vietnam on the correct course to modernization. If the Ngos had viewed the world exclusively from the perspective of Cold War geopolitics, they would have been hard-pressed indeed to come up with a means of defining the “third way” that they proposed to follow. But Diem and Nhu did not see international relations exclusively—or even primarily—from a geopolitical perspective. To their way of thinking, world affairs were defined not by geopolitical clashes, but by what they described as “civilizational” differences. “Never before in the history of the world have conflicts among people been presented more directly in terms of civilizations than at the present time,” Diem declared. According to this view, the Cold War was merely the culmination of a long-running civilizational crisis in Asia that dated back to the European colonial conquests of the nineteenth century.10 Since ancient times, Diem asserted, Asia’s great strength had been its “spiritualism”; yet this spiritualism had been overwhelmed by the “materialistic aggressiveness” of the Western invaders.11 Cowed by their conquerors’ materialist prowess, Diem asserted, Asians had subsequently become “resigned and passive.” It was only in the post–World War II era that a wave of independence movements had served “to bring about a profound transformation and given to [Asia’s] masses an irresistible dynamism.” Dismayingly, however, the advent of decolonization in Asia had coincided with the rise of communism, whose agents trafficked in “false but seductive promises” of shortcuts to development and material prosperity.12 To counter the appeal of communism, Diem argued, Vietnamese and other Asians needed to preserve their most important civilizational traditions while also embracing certain Western values and practices. Personalism, according to this line of thinking, was defined in civilizational terms as a selective fusion of the best of “the East” and “the West.” On the one hand, Diem presented personalism as a distillation of Asian cultural values as manifested in all of its myriad cultural and religious forms. In making this claim, he was deliberately expansive and ecumenical: [A] given civilization has value and merit only to the extent it respects the human person in his intimate autonomy, his life in society, and his transcendental vocation. The paramount value of the human person is constantly affirmed by the Rig Vedas, the Oupanishads, in Mencius, and in the cultural tradition of Viet-Nam.13 On the other hand, personalism also aimed to incorporate what the Ngos described as the “permanent values of Western culture.” If Asians hoped to catch up with

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the materialist development of the West, they must first embrace those aspects of Western culture that had spurred its extraordinary material accomplishments. Significantly, Diem believed that the two most important loci of Western cultural values were the Greco-Roman classical tradition and Christianity: The work of Asian intellectuals teach us that, behind the massive character of the technique by which the West has dominated us, we must seek to grasp the spirit which engenders that technique and to understand that this spirit, born of Grecian logic and of the evangelical message, is a true and permanent value of civilization.14 Clearly, the Ngos did not reject all Western ideas and practices out of hand. Just as personalism aimed to salvage the most useful and relevant elements of Asia’s spiritual heritage, so too would it distill those aspects of Western tradition that were deemed to have universal utility and applicability. The “third way” eschewed both liberalism and communism, but it was not anti-Western per se. To anyone familiar with postcolonial theory, the Ngo brothers’ use of civilizational rhetoric is instantly recognizable as a form of what Edward Said famously described as Orientalism. Diem’s depiction of Asians who became “resigned and passive” in the face of Western aggressiveness recalls standard European descriptions of “Orientals” during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Even more tellingly, the Ngos’ juxtaposition of a materially and technically superior West in opposition to a spiritually baroque East is exactly congruent to the self/other binary that Said identified as the hallmark of European discourse about the relationship between colonizer and colonized. That Diem and Nhu would invoke Orientalist ways of thinking is not particularly surprising; like almost every other Vietnamese nationalist of their generation, they had been educated in French colonial schools and had internalized certain key colonial norms. Of course, the Ngos’ Orientalism was a form of self-Orientalism, since they were using it to construct their own identities as Vietnamese and as Asians. To identify it as such, however, does not distinguish Diem and Nhu from other anticolonialist activists in Vietnam and elsewhere, many of whom found that the essentializing qualities of Orientalist discourse could be redeployed in the service of anticolonial nationalism.15 On the other hand, Diem’s deployment of Orientalist discourse does not conform in its specifics to Said’s model. According to Said, Orientalism is the handmaiden of European imperialism because it portrays the Orient as a static cultural field that can be rescued from its backwardness only by the intervention of the dynamic West. The agency of the colonized has thus been entirely displaced by the colonizer. Diem, in contrast, believed that Asians were awak-

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ening from a long period of cultural torpor and starting to reassert themselves vis-à-vis the West by selective appropriation of the “permanent values of Western culture.” Such willingness to restore a measure of agency to Asian actors is a distinctive feature of a category of Orientalist discourse which Xiaomei Chen has dubbed “Occidentalism.” As Chen defines it, Occidentalism is “a discursive practice that, by constructing its Western Other, has allowed the Orient to participate actively and with indigenous creativity in the process of selfappropriation, even after being appropriated and constructed by Western Others.” By representing “the West” as a repository of cultural resources that could be scavenged for new uses, Diem and Nhu could present personalism as a means by which Vietnamese could regain control of their destiny and realize their modernizing ambitions.16 As a doctrine that relied heavily on modes of thinking associated with French colonialism, Diemist personalism clearly bore the stamp of the Indochinese colonial intellectual milieu in which it was formulated. At the same time, the Occidentalist qualities of personalism confirm its status as an anticolonial discourse (albeit an officially sanctioned anticolonial discourse) that manipulated and redeployed ideas about Asian selves and Western others in the service of national independence and modernization. From the Ngo brothers’ perspective, the advantages of such a discourse were particularly clear in the area of foreign policy. On the one hand, personalism was highly compatible with Diem and Nhu’s view that communism was a latter-day form of imperialism that had to be resisted, and they used personalism to justify their strong support for U.S.-led efforts to contain communist expansion in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. On the other hand, a personalist foreign policy would not be one defined simply by Cold War considerations. For the Ngos, anticommunism was a necessary but not sufficient component of a sound approach to foreign affairs. Instead of casting their policies in a purely geopolitical mold, Diem and Nhu’s determination to pursue a “third path” would also critically shape their diplomatic agenda. This determination became a central feature of their diplomacy with other non-communist governments in Asia, and it colored their dealings with neutralist regimes as well as their ties to anticommunist states.

Personalism as Diplomacy: Diem’s Foreign Policy in Asia If Diem and Nhu’s foreign policy agenda had been derived merely from reflexive anticommunism, as some historians have insisted, then their Asian diplomacy should have been straightforward: (1) hostility toward communist regimes; (2) alliance and cooperation with anticommunist states; (3) disdain

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for self-proclaimed neutralist governments. On the first point, the Ngos generally lived up to their billing. Diem seems never to have seriously considered seeking diplomatic recognition from any communist country in Asia or elsewhere. He also maintained a stance of absolute intransigence with respect to his archrivals in North Vietnam. During the 1950s, Saigon rebuffed repeated offers by Hanoi for diplomatic parleys on various subjects, including the holding of the all-Vietnam elections as prescribed by the Geneva Accords of 1954. The Diem government even turned down Hanoi’s request for a discussion on economic and postal exchanges.17 With respect to neutralist and anticommunist states in Asia, however, Saigon’s policies were rather more complicated and less uniform. Although Cold War concerns were clearly important in Diem’s Asian diplomacy, they cannot explain the striking variations in his policies toward particular non-communist countries. Consider Diem’s attitude toward neutralist governments. There is no doubt that the Ngos were implacably opposed to the idea of neutrality in the Cold War. In Diem’s estimation, neutralism and its corollary of “peaceful coexistence” merely provided cover for communist efforts to take power by means of infiltration, agitation, and subversion. “Communism is not neutral,” he warned. “The Red Empire seeks to impose slavery on the world by means of violence.”18 He was therefore predisposed to view any foreign leader or government who advocated neutralism as shortsighted and naive. On the other hand, Diem and Nhu clearly sympathized with the impulses that they believed had given rise to neutralism in the first place. Even though they disdained it as a strategy, the Ngos recognized that the appeal of neutralism lay in its promise of an alternative route to development and modernization—a sentiment very much in accord with their own determination to find a “third path” between liberal capitalism and communism. The advocates of neutrality were therefore not depraved so much as they were misguided; their desire to chart a new course in foreign affairs was laudable, even if the particular heading they had chosen was unwise. “Neutrality is the wish, the will of Asia to be independent,” stated Ngo Dinh Nhu.19 The Ngo brothers’ attitude toward the foreign leaders and governments who had embraced neutralism was thus more accommodating than it would have been if his foreign policies were based on geopolitical calculations alone. Neutralists might become personalists, Diem and Nhu reasoned, if only they could be made to see that personalism would better fulfill their modernizing ambitions. This reasoning led the Diem government to place surprisingly strong emphasis on ties to nonaligned countries. “We maintain friendly and even very close relations with many neutralist countries,” Diem once boasted with only slight exaggeration. “What interests us in other Asian and African peoples is

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much more their methods of internal free development rather than their positions in the external sphere.”20 His determination in this regard was apparent as early as April 1955, when he made plans to attend the conference of African and Asian states in Bandung, Indonesia. Although a political crisis in South Vietnam forced him to cancel these plans at the last minute, he still made sure that his government was represented at the conference. Of course, Diem’s decision was driven at least in part by his determination to counter any attempts by the communist governments of North Vietnam and China to score propaganda points at the conference. Yet it was also motivated by his conviction that “the real problem of the countries that met at Bandung is the problem of underdevelopment” and by his desire to establish ties to all of South Vietnam’s non-communist neighbors.21 Diem’s willingness to temper his hostility to neutralism for the sake of Asian solidarity under the banner of personalism was particularly apparent in his dealings with India. New Delhi would have figured prominently in South Vietnamese diplomacy in any case, since India headed the three-country International Control Commission (ICC) established in 1954 to oversee the implementation of the Geneva Accords. Yet Diem’s interest in India stemmed not only from his concerns about the ICC but also from his ideas about Indian history and culture. Diem greatly admired India for having achieved independence so soon after World War II, and he professed to subscribe to Mohandas Gandhi’s ideas about nonviolence.22 He also believed that India and Vietnam were linked by a common cultural heritage and that Vietnam “has belonged spiritually to that vast region which historians have named external India.” These shared cultural ties, Diem insisted, should make India particularly receptive to personalism and his ideas about “Asian civilization.” Personalism, he explained in a speech during a 1957 state visit to New Delhi, ought to seem familiar to Indians: In your keen interest in Free Vietnam, India does not step out, so to speak, of its cultural universe. Indeed, does not India rediscover in the context of Vietnamese life, the ideals which are still alive which are India’s essential message to the world, the Primacy of the Spiritual, the Sanctity of the Human Being considered as the Temple of God, ideals which have been repeatedly affirmed in the Rig-veda and the Oupanishad? And also that of the quality of all men proclaimed by Buddhism?23 Diem’s convictions about Vietnam’s cultural affinities with India help to explain an otherwise puzzling feature of his diplomacy toward South Asia: his apparent lack of interest in forging closer relations with Pakistan. Even though

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Pakistan was staunchly anticommunist and a member of the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (and thus in principle committed to defending South Vietnam from communist invasion), Diem never visited Pakistan and did not establish a formal diplomatic presence there even after Karachi had recognized the Saigon government. In this respect, at least, Diem’s South Asian diplomacy was strikingly different to the approach taken by U.S. officials, who typically favored Pakistan over India.24 In his bid to build closer ties to New Delhi, Diem was obliged to deal with Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Given that Nehru was perhaps the most prominent advocate of neutralism in foreign affairs, Diem was remarkably restrained in his dealings with the Indian leader. In their private remarks, Diem and Nhu were often harshly critical of Nehru, and government-backed newspapers in Saigon occasionally chided him for failing to see “that his theory of neutralism is just an illusion.”25 Yet the brothers were much more conciliatory when dealing directly with the Indian premier. This was apparent during Nehru’s first official visit to South Vietnam in October 1954, which took place while Diem was locked in a power struggle with Army General Nguyen Van Hinh. Hinh and his allies used the visit to criticize Nehru and to warn him against any efforts by the ICC to pressure Saigon into making a compromise with Hanoi. The Ngo brothers, in contrast, took a very different tack; instead of denouncing India and neutralism, they emphasized their admiration for Gandhi and for Nehru’s role promoting Indian independence. They also implored the Indian leader to have a “neutral attitude” when investigating South Vietnamese complaints about Hanoi’s violations of the Geneva Accords.26 As the last point suggests, Diem and Nhu’s moderate approach to Nehru was at least partly a bid to win influence with the ICC at North Vietnam’s expense— a bid which seemed to succeed brilliantly in 1962, when India endorsed an ICC report that excoriated Hanoi for backing the insurgency in South Vietnam. The Ngos may have disdained neutralism, but they were still able to soft-pedal that disdain when it suited them to do so. To be sure, not all of Diem’s dealings with neutral countries featured the same cordiality that characterized his relations with India. Saigon’s relations with Cambodia are a case in point. During Diem’s tenure in power, Cambodia was led by Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who was both fiercely nationalist and impulsive. Although deeply suspicious of communism, Sihanouk also feared that Thailand and South Vietnam both planned to expand territorially at Cambodia’s expense. These fears led Sihanouk to pursue a rather mercurial brand of neutralism. On the one hand, he solicited the support of the United States, and in 1955 he signed an agreement with Washington to receive training and equipment for the Cambodian armed forces. On the other hand, he made high-

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profile visits to the Soviet Union and communist China, and in 1958 he established formal diplomatic relations with Beijing.27 In sharp contrast to the outwardly correct attitude that the Ngo brothers displayed in their interactions with Nehru and India, their dealings with Sihanouk were characterized by suspicion, antipathy, and recrimination. The hostility between the two sides was due in part to a long-simmering border dispute; on several occasions, Sihanouk accused the South Vietnamese of grabbing territory by moving border markers to support their claims. The tension was exacerbated by endemic fighting in the border region involving South Vietnamese troops and antigovernment rebels. Although Diem had succeeded in establishing control over Saigon and most of the rest of South Vietnam by 1956, his forces were unable to quell the resistance of Hoa Hao and other rebel factions in parts of the lower Mekong Delta, in part because the rebels often retreated into Cambodia. On several occasions, South Vietnamese army forces crossed the border to attack villages that they believed were being used by the rebels as bases. The situation only got worse in the late 1950s with the emergence of a new communist-led insurgency in South Vietnam. Diem and Nhu demanded that Sihanouk cut off the infiltration of North Vietnamese fighters and supplies from Cambodian territory into South Vietnam, and they blasted him both publicly and privately for allowing the communist bloc to exploit his neutralist stance.28 In retrospect, the most remarkable thing about South Vietnam–Cambodian relations during Diem’s rule is that the two countries maintained formal diplomatic ties for as long as they did. After some initial desultory efforts to resolve their differences with Sihanouk through diplomacy, Diem and Nhu concluded that the best course of action was to try to bring about the Cambodian leader’s overthrow. They furnished Cambodian opposition figures with money and supplies, and allowed the anti-Sihanouk Khmer Serai (Free Khmer) to beam radio broadcasts into Cambodia from South Vietnam. When these measures proved insufficient to bring about the hoped-for coup d’etat, the brothers went even farther. In February 1959, officials in Phnom Penh uncovered a South Vietnamese–backed scheme to bring down Sihanouk’s government via a rebellion led by a disaffected Cambodian general named Dap Chuon. Sihanouk was furious, but he refrained from an open break with Saigon, apparently with the hope that the United States would broker reconciliation. The United States did arrange for Sihanouk to come to Saigon for three days of talks with Diem in August 1959, and relations briefly seemed to be on the mend. Four weeks later, however, the goodwill dissipated when Sihanouk narrowly escaped being killed by a letter bomb delivered to the royal palace in Phnom Penh. There was no conclusive evidence connecting the attack to the Ngo brothers and the two countries continued to maintain official ties afterward; not surprisingly,

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however, bilateral relations remained stormy. The formal rupture finally occurred in August 1963, after South Vietnamese planes bombed a Cambodian provincial guard post and the Khmer Serai radio (which had been shut down in 1961) resumed transmitting into Cambodia.29 The Ngo brothers’ extraordinarily aggressive attitude toward Cambodia— which in some ways was even more confrontational than their stance toward North Vietnam, their archrival—stemmed partly from strategic considerations. Even before the resumption of the communist insurgency in South Vietnam, Diem and Nhu were worried about the danger of infiltration from the North via Cambodia and Laos. As Diem explained to U.S. officials in 1957, his plans for defending South Vietnam from communism were not merely based on fortifying his own borders; he envisioned a coordinated strategy that encompassed all of Indochina, including its Western neighbors.30 For the Ngos, Sihanouk’s unwillingness to cooperate with this strategy justified their efforts to unseat him. Yet strategy alone cannot explain why the Ngos chose to deal with Sihanouk in such an imperious manner. As many U.S. officials observed, a strong strategic case could be made for taking a conciliatory line toward the Cambodian leader. In fact, Diem and Nhu’s policies toward Sihanouk were driven less by grand strategy than by their condescending attitude toward Cambodians and their culture. The Ngos believed that the Cambodians lagged behind the Vietnamese in their intellectual and social development, to the point that they were still dependent on French advisors for policy advice and even for such basic administrative tasks such as the drafting of official documents. Instead of relying on the French, Diem declared, the Phnom Penh government ought to imitate South Vietnamese policies and practices.31 According to Diem and Nhu, Cambodians were culturally retrograde and would need tutelage before they would be fully civilized. Sihanouk’s resistance to such tutelage showed that he was naive and untrustworthy, and quite possibly insane.32 Such thinking showed that the brothers, for all their strong anticolonial convictions, still subscribed to colonial racial theories about the “advanced” or “primitive” qualities of various Indochinese groups. In this respect, the Ngos may have been more indebted to European Orientalism than they cared to admit. South Vietnam’s relations with Laos provide another example of how Diem and Nhu’s foreign policies reflected their reliance on colonialist racial thinking. Unlike relations with Cambodia, which were rocky from an early date, the RVN’s ties to Souvanna Phouma’s neutralist government in Vientiane were initially good during the mid-1950s. Yet Diem viewed the Lao in much the same way he viewed the Cambodians—as a primitive, backward people who needed South Vietnamese guidance and protection.33 The main difference between the

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Lao and the Cambodians, Diem once remarked patronizingly, was that “the Lao were nice people who did not seek to make trouble.”34 He also believed that the Lao had “an inferiority complex” vis-à-vis the Vietnamese.35 Following the collapse of Souvanna’s government in 1958, Diem and Nhu did not hesitate to intervene in Laos on behalf of the conservative factions fighting there. However, they did not hold their Lao allies in particularly high esteem; as Nhu explained to the U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, the royalists in Laos were “most naive about the seriousness of the communist threat” and needed lessons on topics such as political intimidation and the rigging of elections.36 The Ngos also intervened militarily in Laos by dispatching teams of ARVN special forces into the country’s southern panhandle.37 Much to the brothers’ chagrin, however, these moves did not tip the balance in favor of the anticommunist forces. In 1962, the United States and Soviet Union formally agreed to neutralize Laos and to support the formation of a coalition government that included both communists and conservatives. Washington signed the pact over strenuous protests by Diem, who insisted that the arrangement would lead inevitably to a communist takeover. The Ngos were dealt another diplomatic setback in November 1962, when the Lao government formally recognized North Vietnam. Incensed, Diem retaliated the next day by downgrading relations with Vientiane. This move was born in part from Diem’s disappointment with the U.S. decision, but it also reflected his conviction that the Lao needed to be made to see the error of their ways. As the above examples suggest, Diem’s policies toward neutral countries cannot be explained simply as a function of beliefs about the nature of communism and the Cold War. But what about his dealings with other anticommunist governments in Asia? In some ways, the Diem government’s relations with its counterparts in Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, the Philippines, and Malaya were defined by a shared commitment to the strategy of containment. For example, in 1954 South Vietnam cooperated with the first four of those countries in the creation of the Asian People’s Anti-Communist League, an organization officially dedicated to the formation of “an Anti-Communist front to fight Communist Imperialism and annihilate it altogether.”38 Yet such expressions of anticommunist solidarity, though frequently and loudly made, were not always enough to ensure smooth relations with these allies. South Vietnam’s relations with the Republic of China (ROC) provide a particularly telling example of how Diem was sometimes unwilling to sacrifice other policy concerns for the sake of “free world” solidarity. Cold War logic suggested that Diem’s RVN government and Chiang Kai-shek’s ROC regime on Taiwan ought to have been close allies. After all, both leaders were implacably hostile to Marxism-Leninism, and both dreamed of conquering their

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communist rivals and reuniting their respective nations. Despite these obvious affinities, however, relations between the two governments were remarkably rocky during the first few years of Diem’s rule. The reasons for the antipathy between Saigon and Taibei had nothing to do with the Cold War; rather, they had to do with Diem’s heavy-handed treatment of South Vietnam’s ethnic Chinese minority. There were more than half a million overseas Chinese (called Hoa Kieu by the Vietnamese) living in South Vietnam in the mid-1950s. As in many other Southeast Asian countries, the Chinese enjoyed disproportionate influence in many sectors of the South Vietnamese economy, especially retail and banking. They also enjoyed the protection and support of the ROC government. The terms of a 1946 treaty between the ROC and France allowed the Hoa Kieu to be treated as Chinese citizens and permitted ROC diplomats to be directly involved in Chinese community affairs in Vietnam. During his first year in office, Diem cultivated good relations with the Chinese in South Vietnam and his ties to the ROC were correspondingly strong; beginning in about 1955, however, his attitude to the Chinese became considerably more suspicious and hostile. Apparently egged on by Nhu, Diem issued a series of decrees aimed at forcing the Chinese in the RVN to become Vietnamese citizens and to assimilate to Vietnamese cultural practices. These included such blatantly discriminatory practices as barring noncitizens from a list of eleven Chinesedominated occupations. The bewildered and angry Chinese reacted by using their economic clout to cripple South Vietnam’s retail trade; they also sparked a black market devaluation of the RVN currency by withdrawing their assets from the country’s banks. In addition to the economic backlash, Diem’s moves also provoked howls of protest from ROC officials. Taibei was particularly upset that Saigon refused even to discuss the issue through diplomatic channels. By the fall of 1956, an outright rupture in ROC–RVN ties seemed possible.39 Diem’s actions vis-à-vis the overseas Chinese and his dismissive attitude toward the ROC have often been explained as a product of nationalism and ethnic chauvinism—in other words, as a result of the same kinds of prejudices that plagued his dealings with Cambodia and Laos. In this case, however, there was an important difference: Unlike his relations with Cambodia and Laos, which steadily worsened over time, his relations with both the overseas Chinese in South Vietnam and the ROC improved dramatically after 1957. By the summer of that year, Diem realized that his coercive approach to the citizenship issue had been disastrous, and he decided to reverse course. Face-saving changes were made to the naturalization decrees to allow the Hoa Kieu to keep their businesses; the government also backed away from the most draconian of its assimilationist measures. The shift in strategy worked, and hundreds of

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thousands of Chinese were naturalized voluntarily.40 Significantly, the success of the new policy seemed to result partly from Diem’s emphasis on the cultural links between Vietnam and China. As he told a group of Chinese on the occasion of their naturalization: Chinese blood flows in the veins of the Vietnamese, and the Chinese have contributed in large measure to shaping the history of Viet-Nam from every viewpoint: political, military, economic and cultural . . . Vietnamese and Chinese have almost the same more outlook and culture. Thus, Chinese who become Vietnamese could contribute in reinforcing Viet-Nam’s moral outlook and culture.41 In addition to using cultural rhetoric to patch things up with the overseas Chinese, Diem also invoked culture in the course of mending ties to the ROC. During a high-profile 1960 state visit to Taibei, Diem declared that his compatriots had an abiding interest in Chinese literature, philosophy, and culture because they saw it as way to promote “the traditional values which to the Vietnamese nation is still very attached.”42 On other occasions, Diem made clear his view that RVN-ROC ties were based not only on a shared commitment to anticommunism, but also on a shared commitment to what he described as “Confucian learning.”43 Diem’s perception of the Chinese was thus qualitatively different from his perceptions of Cambodian and Lao people, and was in many ways more reminiscent of his views of India. For Diem, the Chinese (like the Indians) were linked to the Vietnamese by cultural and civilizational bonds that Cambodians and Lao had not yet embraced. Even though Diem was determined to incorporate the Hoa Kieu into the Vietnamese body politic, his reliance on colonial notions about cultural and civilizational hierarchies made him more flexible in his dealings with the Chinese than with other racial and ethnic groups.44 In comparison to his dealings with the ROC, Diem’s ties to the anticommunist governments of Thailand and South Korea were smooth and mostly free of controversy. Diem naturally viewed his good relations with Bangkok and Seoul as conducive to the solidarity of the “free world” in Asia. At the same time, he also looked at those governments as potential partners in South Vietnam’s bid to find a “third path” to development. His diplomacy toward Thailand and South Korea was therefore colored by his determination to persuade leaders in those countries of the virtues of personalism. During a state visit to Bangkok in 1957, Diem declared to his Thai hosts that cooperation between the two nations “must not be based on the changing alliances of political op-

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portunism”; rather, it ought to be founded “on those eternal values which are the foundation of the Asian civilization, its raison de vivre and also its glory.”45 In a trip to Seoul later that year, Diem predictably noted that South Korea and South Vietnam were similar in that both states had been obliged to share their national territory with a communist archrival. Yet he also insisted that the two governments were bound by another, equally important mutual interest: the defense of “the very foundations of Asian culture” for the purpose of promoting “its renaissance by giving it a new orientation toward the active respect for the human person.”46 In retrospect, it seems significant that Diem chose to emphasize cultural and diplomatic cooperation with South Korea and Thailand rather than military collaboration. Despite the steady gains made by the communist-led National Liberation Front (NLF) in South Vietnam after 1960, Diem responded unenthusiastically to American suggestions that he seek military assistance from Seoul and Bangkok.47 Diem’s reticence in this case stands in marked contrast to the attitude of later South Vietnamese leaders, who allowed significant numbers of South Korean and Thai troops to join the fight against the NLF. Diem was happy to have the Thais and Koreans as allies, but he was not inclined to define those alliances in military terms. Diem’s lack of interest in Thai and Korean military assistance did not mean that he had entirely written off his Asian neighbors as a potential source of aid in his war against the NLF. In fact, Diem actively sought and received military support from another anticommunist country in Southeast Asia: the Federation of Malaya. As many historians have noted, Diem’s interest in Malaya was shaped in part by Britain’s successful suppression of a communist insurgency there during the 1950s. Diem paid particular attention to the “new village” program, a scheme under which the British sought to separate the guerrillas from the population by herding the latter into fortified settlements. The new village plan bore some resemblance to a 1959 South Vietnamese initiative known as the agroville program. Designed by Ngo Dinh Nhu, this program envisioned the concentration of millions of Mekong Delta peasants into modern “agricultural towns.” The agroville program was superceded in 1961 by the even more ambitious strategic hamlet program, which proposed to isolate and defeat the NLF by fortifying every village in South Vietnam. Significantly, the launch of the hamlet program in late 1961 coincided with the establishment of a new British advisory mission (BRIAM) in Saigon. BRIAM was headed by the former secretary of defense in Malaya, Sir Robert Thompson, who hoped to incorporate the counterinsurgencies theories honed in Malaya into the evolving hamlet program.48 As it turns out, the impact of Malaya on Diem and Nhu’s strategic thinking has been misunderstood. Contrary to what many historians have assumed, the

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brothers did not treat the new village concept as a template for strategic hamlets. Thompson himself reported that the Ngos rejected many of his suggestions, and he eventually disavowed any responsibility for the hamlet program.49 More recently, the historian Philip Catton has shown that the Malayan precedent was just one of many examples that shaped the evolution of the theory behind strategic hamlets.50 This is not to say that Diem and Nhu’s interest in Malaya was feigned, however. Rather, Malaya was less important to them as a source of counterinsurgency tactics than as a strategic partner. The developing alliance between the two governments was shaped above all else by the friendship that developed between Diem and Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra AlHaj, who became premier of Malaya upon its independence in 1957. The two men hit it off during the Tunku’s first official visit to South Vietnam in January 1958; the Malayan leader was especially touched by Diem’s gift of a painting that he had noticed the Tunku admiring in the presidential palace.51 This encounter was followed by military exchanges in 1959 and by Diem’s highprofile official visit to Kuala Lumpur in 1960. As Diem subsequently explained to U.S. officials, the trip confirmed for him the wisdom of future cooperation with Malaya, even if he did not think that the counterinsurgency lessons learned there were directly applicable South Vietnam.52 The emerging alliance was clinched after the official end of the Malayan war in 1960, when the Tunku began shipping weapons and military vehicles to South Vietnam for use against the NLF.53 Abdul Rahman and Diem clearly admired each other’s strong anticommunist convictions. Yet the two had more in common than just a shared hostility to Marxism-Leninism. In 1960, the same year that he received Diem in Kuala Lumpur, the Tunku floated a proposal for creating a Southeast Asia-wide cultural and economic organization. When Diem was asked about this proposal, he readily endorsed it. In keeping with his personalist convictions, however, he insisted that such an organization should deal not only with technical issues of trade and economic exchange, but also with broader cultural questions: I have always supported the idea of the nations [of Southeast Asia] organizing themselves into a community. . . . I have been particularly interested in discussing this issue from a cultural perspective because, in my view, twentieth century economics is not simply about the exchange of goods, nor is it simply about setting prices in the market. The economics of the twentieth century must take account not only of material things, but also of every person and every aspect of human activity in order to promote the development of each human being. If we do not agree about how to assess

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the human being, or about the social consequences of economic actions, then we will not find the basis for compromise solutions within the community [of nations] . . .54 For Diem, the Tunku must have seemed an ideal ally: in addition to being a staunch anticommunist and a willing supplier of military hardware, he also shared Diem’s interest in exploring new forms of cooperation among Asian nations. This is not to say that Abdul Rahman had embraced Diem’s theories about personalism or endorsed his rhetoric about “Asian civilization.” Still, both men sensed that they were thinking along similar lines not only about communism but also about Asian affairs generally. They therefore embraced each other as friends and allies. The Tunku would later remember Diem as the most impressive of all the foreign leaders he had met.55 At the same time that Diem’s relations with Abdul Rahman and Malaya were growing warmer, his ties to another Southeast Asian anticommunist country were becoming decidedly cool. The Republic of the Philippines (RP) had once been Diem’s strongest ally in Asia. During 1954–1955, when the fate of Diem’s new regime seemed to be hanging in the balance, RP President Ramon Magsaysay was virtually the only anticommunist leader in the region who lent South Vietnam anything more than moral support. Magsaysay was initially as skeptical as everyone else about Diem’s ability as a leader56; however, he bowed to American pressure to provide some assistance to the new government. Edward Lansdale, a CIA operative who was close to both Magsaysay and Diem, arranged for Filipino medical teams to come to South Vietnam to provide care to the population in the war-ravaged countryside. RP military officers were also called upon to furnish advice and training to their South Vietnamese counterparts; one of them gave a crash course to Diem’s newly formed presidential guards.57 After Diem unexpectedly routed his rivals in the Battle of Saigon in the spring of 1955, it seemed likely that the two governments would build even closer ties. But Magsaysay was killed in a plane crash in 1957, and his death was followed by an upsurge of anti-Americanism in the Philippines.58 RP leaders became correspondingly wary of Diem, lest they be seen as too eager to curry favor with Washington. Relations between Saigon and Manila remained cordial thereafter—Diem made an official visit in 1958 and also received President Carlos Garcia in Saigon in 1959—but they were clearly not as close as they had been under Magsaysay. Diem was grateful for the Filipino support he received during the early years he was in power, and he probably would have preferred to maintain close ties with Manila if Magsaysay had lived. But he also harbored some doubts about the Filipinos’ reliability as allies, and these became more pronounced after

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Magsaysay was gone. Some of his worries had to do with his estimate of overall Filipino military strength, which he deemed to be insufficient to be of help in a major crisis.59 More important, he seemed suspicious of Filipino political culture, and uncertain about whether the Philippines was ready and willing to embrace the “third path” of personalism. In 1958, Diem told the Filipino Congress that “whether we like it or not, the Philippines, as well as Vietnam, are Asian countries and must accept not only the values, but also the passions of Asia.” But then, rather ambivalently, he suggested that the Philippines were actually historically and culturally distinct from the other countries of the region: President Magsaysay was right in stating that the Philippines are the most westernised of the Asian nations. Perhaps this is because in the XVI century as in the XIX, the Philippines came into contact with civilizations which were perfectly certain of their principles as well as of their methods. But a large part of Asia and Africa has had a completely different development…Most of the present Asian leaders have, to a greater or lesser degree, participated in the general reshaping of the values which have stirred European minds for the last thirty years, and which demand a profound reform, if not an overthrow, of the traditional democracy.60 Although Diem’s language in this speech is characteristically cryptic, the gist can be discerned: The Philippines, more than its neighbors, had been excessively Westernized (and perhaps excessively Americanized). As a result, he suggested, Filipinos were overly infatuated with “traditional democracy”— that is, with Western liberalism. In his inimitably dense and abstruse manner, Diem had all but stated that the Philippines were not yet ready to embrace personalism and gain full inclusion within the circle of Asia’s “civilized” nations. The contrasting trajectories of Diem’s relations with the Philippines and Malaya—both staunchly anticommunist—show that his diplomacy was far too idiosyncratic and contradictory to explained simply as a product of Cold War thinking. A diplomatic strategy built around personalism and “Asian civilization,” Diem believed, could give rise to new forms of comity and cooperation in the region. However, Diem frequently undercut his own internationalist logic by viewing certain Asian countries and ethnic groups as less civilized— or even as less Asian—than others. Depending on which of these two contrasting tendencies predominated in his thinking about a particular nation, Diem might find himself solidifying an alliance or drifting toward estrangement (or even confrontation). The conventional interpretation of Diem as a leader who reduced all aspects of foreign affairs to the single principle of anticommunism is therefore inadequate. Diem was in many ways a Cold War-

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rior par excellence, but he always refracted his Cold War concerns through the lenses of his ideas about culture and civilization. The result was a diplomatic balance sheet that was profoundly mixed. In retrospect, the singular successes which Diem enjoyed in his relations with particular countries were offset by his striking lack of progress toward the realization of his broader objectives in foreign affairs.

Conclusion In many ways, Diem’s Asian diplomacy seems as flawed as some of the domestic policies that he pursued. To be sure, certain aspects of his foreign policy seem laudable in retrospect, and he did claim some noteworthy diplomatic achievements. His eschewal of simplistic Cold War thinking and his promotion of personalism as a “third path” to modernity allowed him to be unexpectedly flexible in his dealings with neutralist countries such as India. His notions about international comity founded on “Asian civilization” also served him well in his bid to repair his damaged relations with Taiwan, and in the alliance he forged with Malaya. However, the arrogant and condescending attitude Diem displayed in his actions in Cambodia and Laos revealed that he did not view all of his fellow Asians to be equally civilized; in this respect, his reliance on old colonial racialist ideas proved to be counterproductive to his goal of promoting Asian solidarity. More generally, Diem failed to persuade other Asian governments that personalism could be the foundation for a new international order in Asia. Diem’s dealings with other anticommunist leaders in countries such as Thailand, South Korea and the Philippines were correct and collegial, but they did not give rise to the kind of civilizational unity that he envisioned. Nor is there any evidence that any of his Asian allies ever endorsed—or even understood—his claims about personalism and its potential as a “third path” to Asian development. That said, the fact that Diem was largely unsuccessful in meeting his diplomatic objectives in Asia does not mean that his foreign policies ought to be dismissed as the historically irrelevant rantings of a tradition-bound mandarin. On the contrary, Diem’s ideas about personalism and “Asian civilization,” though idiosyncratic and often hard to follow, were reflective of the intense interest in post-1945 Southeast Asia in alternate models for development and modernization. As a leader who was deeply suspicious not only of communism but also of liberalism, Diem was hardly unusual among the conservative Asian leaders who came to power during the early postcolonial era. Indeed, in some respects, Diem may have been unfortunate in being slightly ahead of his time. A plausible case can be made that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations

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(ASEAN), established in 1967, was precisely the kind of internationalist initiative that Diem anticipated—a league of Asian states dedicated not only to anticommunism but also to collaboration on issues of development and modernization. (In this regard, it may be significant that his most ardent supporter among his peers was Abdul Rahman, whose 1960 proposal for a regional organization turned out to be a key step toward the formation of ASEAN.) Similarly, Diem’s notion of “Asian civilization” bears at least a passing resemblance to the “Asian values” rhetoric that gained currency in East and Southeast Asia during the 1980s and 1990s. In the end, of course, Diem’s historical significance hinges much less on the (debatably) prescient nature of his Asian diplomacy than on his role as a central figure in the history of the Vietnam War. Still, the ideas that defined his policies toward other non-communist governments in Asia also figured prominently in his relations with the United States, and in his domestic policies. A thorough understanding of Diem’s fate therefore requires a more nuanced assessment of both the origins and the failure of the “personalist revolution.” Such an assessment is unlikely to settle the ongoing debates between Diem’s admirers and detractors. It can, however, pave the way for a more historically minded assessment of Diem and the conflict that eventually engulfed him and his regime.

Notes 1. The best book-length study of Diem’s relations with the United States is Philip Catton, Diem’s Final Failure: Prelude to America’s War in Vietnam (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2002). Catton’s nuanced treatment of Diem’s ideas and his able use of Vietnamese sources puts him head and shoulders above scholars who continue to base their analyses of Diem exclusively on research of American documents. Compare with David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000); Seth Jacobs, America’s Miracle Man in Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem, Religion, Race, and U.S. Intervention in Southeast Asia, 1950–1957 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004); and James Carter, Inventing Vietnam: The United States and State Building, 1954– 1968 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Another recent study that offers compelling insight into Diem’s relations with the United States—and which is also based on substantial research in Vietnamese sources—is Matthew Masur, “Exhibiting Signs of Resistance: South Vietnam’s Struggle for Legitimacy, 1954–1960,” Diplomatic History 33, no. 2 (April 2009): 293–313. Diem’s relations with France during the early years of his rule are covered in Pierre Grosser, “La France et L’Indochine (1953–1956): Une ‘Carte de Visite’ en ‘Peau de Chagrin’” (PhD diss., Institut D’Etudes Politiques de Paris, 2002). See also Kathryn Statler, Replacing France: The Origins of American Intervention in Vietnam (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007), esp. chapters 4 through 8. Diem’s dealings with Great Britain have not been as thor-

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oughly explored; the most important work to date on this subject is Peter Busch, All the Way with JFK? Britain, the US and the Vietnam War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 2. William Henderson and Wesley R. Fishel, “The Foreign Policy of Ngô Dinh Diem,” Vietnam Perspectives 2, no. 1 (August 1966): 7. 3. Ibid., 8. 4. George Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950– 1975, 4th ed. (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2002), 59. 5. The argument that personalism was so muddled as to be meaningless—and the corollary claim about it being a cynical attempt to justify Diem’s absolutist aspirations—gained currency in writings by Western journalists and others during the 1960s and 1970s. Robert Shaplen noted that the explanations of personalism offered by Diem’s brother Ngo Dinh Nhu were typically “bewildering,” and concluded that “whatever (Personalism) was, it was only a theory, while in practice it was what Nhu wanted it to be.” Shaplen, The Lost Revolution: The Story of Twenty Years of Neglected Opportunities in Vietnam and of America’s Failure to Foster Democracy There (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 130–31. Frances Fitzgerald described personalism as an “incomprehensible hodge-podge,” and suggested that even the Ngo brothers themselves did not really understand the doctrine; in her view, this was further evidence that Diem was “a traditionalist who looked only backwards into the old stream of Confucian civilization.” Fitzgerald, Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1972), 95–96, 118. Some authors made more of an effort to pin down the intellectual origins of Diemist personalism, but still ended up concluding that the doctrine was really nothing more than a rationalization for dictatorship. See Bernard Fall, The Two Viet-Nams: A Political and Military Analysis, rev. ed. (New York: Praeger, 1964), 246–52; and Dennis Duncanson, Government and Revolution in Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 216–17. 6. Marguerite Higgins, Our Vietnam Nightmare (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 166. 7. Emmanuel Mounier, Personalism, Philip Mairet, trans. (London: Routledge & Paul, 1952). The scholarship on Mounier is extensive. A particularly thoughtful treatment is John Hellman, Emmanuel Mounier and the New Catholic Left, 1930–1950 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981). As Hellman points out, Mounier and his ideas are not easily plotted on the spectrum of French politics during the 1930s and 1940s; the philosopher was linked at various times to Pétain’s “National Revolution” and to the French Communist Party, but ended up dissatisfied with both (p. 249). 8. Ngo Dinh Diem, “Hiệu triệu của Tổng Thống nhân ngày Song Thất, 7-7-1959” (Address of the President on Double Seven Day, July 7, 1959), in Con Đường Chính Nghĩa: Nhân Vị, Cộng Đồng Đồng Tiến (Saigon: Sở Báo Chí Phủ Tổng Thống, 1959), 5: 109. See also the insightful discussion in Catton, Diem’s Final Failure, 38–42. 9. On Nhu’s efforts to connect personalism to “Third Force” politics in Vietnam during the early 1950s, see Edward Miller, “Vision, Power and Agency: The Ascent of Ngô Ðình Diệm, 1945–1954,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 35, no. 3 (October 2004): 433–58. 10. Ngo Dinh Diem, “Address at Seton Hall upon Receiving the Degree of Doctor of Law Honoris Causa from that University, May 12, 1957,” in The Emergence of Free

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Viet-Nam: Major Addresses Delivered by President Ngo-Dinh-Diem during his Official Visit to the United States of America (Saigon: Presidency of the Republic of VietNam, 1957), 20. 11. Ngô Dinh Diem, “Address delivered at Seoul University on receiving the degree of Doctor of Law Honoris Causa, September 21, 1957,” in Toward Better Mutual Understanding, vol. 1: Speeches Delivered by President Ngo Dinh Diem during His State Visits to Thailand, Australia, Korea, 2nd ed. (Saigon: Presidency of the Republic of Vietnam, 1958), 59–60. 12. Ngô Dinh Diem, “Address before a joint session of the Congress of the United States, May 19, 1957,” in Emergence of Free Vietnam, 7–11. 13. Diem, “Address at Seton Hall.” 14. Diem, “Address at Seoul University.” 15. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978). For an illuminating discussion on the connections between Orientalism and anticolonialism in India, see Richard Fox, Gandhian Utopia: Experiments with Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989). 16. Xiaomei Chen, Occidentalism: A Theory of Counter-Discourse in Post-Mao China, 2nd ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), 2. 17. “Bản tuyên-cáo của Chánh Phủ Việt-Nam Cộng Hòa ngày 26 tháng năm 1958 về vấn đề thống nhất lãnh thổ” (Proclamation of the RVN Government on April 26, 1958 on the issue of reunification of the territory), in Con Đường Chính Nghĩa: ĐộcLập, Dân-Chủ (Saigon: Sở Báo Chí Phủ Tổng Thống, 1958), 4: 41–51. The single most intriguing exception to Diem and Nhu’s unwillingness to engage in diplomacy with North Vietnam concerns a brief exchange facilitated by the Polish representative to the ICC during August and September 1963. Recent research suggests, however, that the brothers neither initiated these exchanges nor treated them as a serious opportunity to open a dialog with Hanoi. See Margaret K. Gnoinska, “Poland and Vietnam, 1963: New Evidence on Secret Communist Diplomacy and the ‘Maneli Affair,’” Working Paper 45, The Cold War International History Project, March 2005, www.cwihp.org (accessed September 25, 2005). 18. Ngo Dinh Diem, “Thông Điệp của Tổng Thống Việt Nam Cộng Hòa đọc ngày Lễ Song Thất 1961” (Message of the President Read on the Occasion of Double Seven Day, 1961), in Con Đường Chính Nghĩa: Nhân Vị, Cộng Đồng Đồng Tiến (Saigon: Sở Báo Chí Phủ Tổng Thống, 1961), 7: 115. 19. Ngô Đình Nhu, “Why We Must Defend the Present Regime,” speech and comments at a press conference in Saigon, November 15, 1957, Folder 21, Box 02, John Donnell Collection, The Vietnam Archive, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX (henceforth VA, TTU). 20. RVN Presidential Press Office, “Interview with the President of the Republic of Vietnam by Mr. Michael Maclean, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation,” October 5, 1959. A copy of this and the interview cited in the following footnote can be found in a binder labeled “Interviews” in the Cornell University Library (DS557.A6 A451). 21. Quotation from RVN Presidential Press Office, “Interview accordée par le Président de la Republique à M. David Wirmark, Secretaire Général de l’assemblée Mondiale de la Jeunesse,” November 18, 1959. Diem told U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in March 1955 that he placed high priority on establishing relations with neutral countries such as India, Burma, and Indonesia. See Telegram, Dulles to Dep-

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State, March 1, 1955, in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1985), 1: 100. (This and other volumes in this series are hereafter designated FRUS.) Interestingly, the delegation that Diem ended up sending to Bandung in his place included Trình Minh Thế, the chief of a dissident faction of the Cao Dai religious sect and a Diem ally; Sergei Blagov, Honest Mistakes: The Life and Death of Trình Minh Thế (1922–1955), South Vietnam’s Alternative Leader (Huntington, NY: Nova Science Publishers, 2001), 137–39. Recent research on the Bandung conference has emphasized the diversity of participants’ views of the meaning of the event. See J.A.C. Mackie, Bandung 1955: Non-Alignment and Afro-Asian Solidarity (Singapore: Editions Didier Millet, 2005). 22. The influence of Gandhi’s ideas on Diem was a frequent theme of South Vietnamese government propaganda, especially during the early years of Diem’s rule. See, for example, “The Philosophy of the Revolution,” The Times of Viet-nam Magazine, February 25, 1956, p. 1. 23. Ngô Đình Diệm, “Address before the ‘Indian Council of World Affairs,’” in Toward Better Mutual Understanding, vol. 2: Speeches Delivered by President Ngô Dinh Diem during His State Visits to India and the Philippines (Saigon: Presidency of the Republic of Vietnam, 1958), 15. 24. Of course, this is not to say that cultural and racial biases did not influence American policy toward South Asia. For the argument that U.S. policies toward India and Pakistan were conditioned by gendered notions about Hinduism and Islam, see Andrew Rotter, “Gender Relations, Foreign Relations: The United States and South Asia, 1947–1964,” in Peter Hanh and Mary Ann Heiss, eds., Empire and Revolution: The United States and the Third World since 1945 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2000), 195–213. 25. “Cút-sếp và thuyết Trung lập” (Krushchev and the Theory of Neutralism), Cách Mạng Quốc Gia, January 11, 1956, p. 1. See also Nhu’s remarks to Ambassador Elbridge Durbrow as described in Memorandum of Conversation, January 30, 1958, in FRUS, 1958–1960, 1: 7. 26. Report 404/ PVS/BST/S, Gelot to Delegué Général de France au Sud Vietnam, November 2, 1954, 10 H 4198, Archives de la Service Historique de l’Armée de la Terre (hereafter SHAT), Vincennes, France. This report contains the text of a pamphlet that was circulated in Saigon during Nehru’s visit. Although unsigned, the pro-Diem content of the pamphlet strongly suggests that it was approved by the government, if not produced by the Palace. 27. On Sihanouk and the policies he pursued after 1954, see David Chandler, The Tragedy of Cambodian History: Politics, War and Revolution since 1945 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991), 85–121; and Milton Osborne, Sihanouk: Prince of Light, Prince of Darkness (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994), 86–122. 28. For Diem’s complaints about Sihanouk and his inaction on the issue of crossborder infiltration, see Telegram 180, Durbrow to Phnom Penh, November 13, 1957, in FRUS 1955–1957, 1: 861. Sihanouk, for his part, was particularly annoyed by a 1958 Vietnamese incursion into the province of Steng Trung. See Editorial Note, FRUS, 1958–1960 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1992), 16: 230–31. 29. On the Dap Chuon plot and the 1959 attempt on Sihanouk’s life, see Kenton Clymer, The United States and Cambodia: From Curiosity to Confrontation, 1870– 1969 (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), 66–78. See also Chandler, Tragedy of Cam-

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bodian History, 99–107. For Sihanouk’s recollection of these events, see Norodom Sihanouk, My War with the CIA: The Memoirs of Prince Norodom Sihanouk (New York: Pantheon, 1972), 102–11. On Sihanouk’s decision to sever diplomatic relations with Saigon in 1963, see Research Memorandum RFE-100, Hughes to SecState, December 19, 1963, Document Number CK3100485088, in Declassified Documents Reference System, online ed. (Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, 2005). 30. Memorandum of Conversation, May 10, 1957, in FRUS 1955–1957, 1: 809. 31. Ibid., 811. 32. Memorandum of Conversation, January 30, 1958, in FRUS 1958–1960, 1: 9. 33. Memorandum of Conversation, July 24, 1956, in FRUS, 1955–1957, 1: 727. 34. Telegram 938, Reinhardt to DepState, September 17, 1956, in ibid., 1: 738. 35. Memorandum of Conversation, May 9, 1957, in ibid., 1: 802. 36. Memorandum of Conversation, January 30, 1958, in FRUS, 1958–1960, 1: 6–7. 37. Telegram 229, Nolting to DepState, August 14, 1961, in FRUS, 1961–1963, 1: 280. 38. “Important Documents of the Asian People’s Anti-Communist League, Volume 1,” n.d., Folder 02, Box 09, Douglas Pike Collection, Unit 11—Monographs, VA, TTU. 39. An important recent study of Diem’s relations with the Chinese is Thomas Engelbert, Die chinesische Minderheit im Süden Vietnams (Hoa) als Paradigma der kolonialen und nationalistischen Nationalitätenpolitik (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2002), 505–40; another useful account is Tsai Maw-kuey, Les Chinois au Sud-Vietnam (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1968), 52–84. For a perceptive analysis by a contemporary observer, see Bernard B. Fall, “Viet-Nam’s Chinese Problem,” in Far Eastern Survey 27, no. 5 (May 1958): 65–72. Diem’s initially warm ties to the Chinese were due in large part to his reliance on a Cholon insider named Lei Wong Kaai (a.k.a. Lý Giai Hang, alias “Ly Khai”) to manage relations with the Hoa Kiều. See Despatch 219, AmEmbassy Saigon to DepState, January 6, 1955, 751G.11/1-655, State Department Central Files, Record Group 59, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD (henceforth NARA). After Lei was murdered by the Bình Xuyên gang in the spring of 1955, Diem’s doubts about the loyalty of the Chinese community increased, and he shifted toward a more confrontational stance. See Despatch 387, Kidder to DepState, May 7, 1955, 751G.00/5-755, NARA. For evidence that Nhu was behind this shift, see Despatch 127, Anderson to DepState, October 19, 1955, 751G.13/ 10-1955, NARA. 40. Tsai, Les Chinois au Sud-Vietnam, 69–70. 41. Ngô Đình Diệm, quoted in Fall, “Viet-Nam’s Chinese Problem,” 72. 42. Ngô Đình Diệm, “Lời Tuyên Bố của Tổng Thống Việt Nam Cộng Hòa với Báo Chí ở Đài Bắc (19-1-1960)” (Statement of the RVN President to the press in Taiwan, January 19, 1960), in Con Đường Chính Nghĩa: Nhân Vị, Cộng Đồng Đồng Tiến (Saigon: Sở Báo Chí Phủ Tổng Thống, 1961), 7: 51–52. 43. Diem’s interest in the state of Confucian studies in Taiwan was reflected in his invitation to Kong Decheng, an ROC expert on Confucianism who visited South Vietnam in 1958. Diem’s interest in “Confucian learning” is discussed in Edward Miller, “Confucianism and ‘Confucian Learning’ in South Vietnam during the Diem Years, 1954–1963” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association of Asian Studies, New York City, March 2003). 44. It is illuminating in this regard to compare Diem’s abandonment of his efforts

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426

Contributors

Ang Cheng Guan is associate professor and head of Humanities and Social Studies Education, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He specializes in the international history of the Indochina wars. His research interests include the post–World War II international history of Southeast Asia and Asian strategic thinking. He is the author of The Vietnam War from the Other Side: The Vietnamese Communists’ Perspective (London: Routledge Curzon, 2002), and its sequel, Ending the Vietnam War: The Vietnamese Communists’ Perspective (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004). His forthcoming book is titled Southeast Asia and the Vietnam War (Routledge, 2009), and his current research/book project is tentatively titled The International History of the Vietnam War: The Denouement 1967–1975. Michael W. Charney is senior lecturer of Southeast Asian history at the School of Oriental and African Studies (London). He completed his dissertation at the University of Michigan in 1999 on the subject of the emergence of Theravada Buddhist and Muslim communalism in western Burma. His research currently focuses on the history of literature, technology, and warfare in Southeast Asia, especially Burma (Myanmar) and Thailand. In addition to articles in the Journal of Social and Economic History of the Orient, Journal of Asian History, South East Asia Research, Journal of Burma Studies, and other journals, as well as chapters in books, he has published Southeast Asian Warfare, 1300–1900 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), Powerful Learning: Buddhist Literati and the Throne in Burma’s Last Dynasty, 1752–1885 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Centers for South and Southeast Asian Studies, 2006), and A History of Modern Burma (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Chen Jian holds the Michael J. Zak chair of history for U.S.–China relations at Cornell University. He has published widely on Chinese and international

427

Contributors

affairs, including Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001) and China’s Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino–American Confrontation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). Samuel E. Crowl is a doctoral candidate in Southeast Asian history at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. He is currently completing his dissertation titled, “Faces of the Revolution Abroad: Indonesia’s Diplomatic Path to Independence, 1945–1949.” He has an M.A. in international affairs (Southeast Asian studies) from Ohio University and a B.A. in English literature from Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. Sam teaches at Ohio University and has worked for the Japanese Ministry of Education in Osaka, Japan, and the Institute of International Education in Washington, DC. Daniel Fineman is head of research for Credit Suisse in Bangkok, Thailand. He wrote his doctoral dissertation at Yale and authored a book on Thai diplomatic history titled, A Special Relationship: The United States and Military Government in Thailand, 1947–1958 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997). He has worked with the Federal Reserve, the U.S. Treasury Department, and JP Morgan. Anne L. Foster is assistant professor of history at Indiana State University. She examines the comparative colonial history of Southeast Asia from 1890 to 1941, and is currently focusing on policies regarding opium. Her first book, Projections of Power: U.S. and European Entanglements in Colonial Southeast Asia, 1919–1941, is forthcoming from Duke University Press in 2010. Ilya V. Gaiduk is a senior research scholar at the Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow. His recent books included The Soviet Union and the Vietnam War (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996); Confronting Vietnam: Soviet Policy toward the Indochina Conflict, 1954–1963 (Washington, DC: Wilson Center Press; Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003); and The Great Confrontation: Europe and Islam through the Centuries (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003). He is a participant of a number of projects and conferences on the history of the Cold War and is now studying Soviet and Western policies toward the UN in post–World War II years. Christopher E. Goscha is associate professor of international relations at the Université du Québec à Montréal. He has published several articles and books

428

Contributors

on Southeast Asian international history, colonial Indochina, and the Vietnam Wars, including Thailand and the Southeast Asian Networks of the Vietnamese Revolution (1885–1954) (London: Routledge, 1999). He is currently working on A Historical Dictionary of the Indochina War (1945–1954): International and Interdisciplinary Approaches, and a history of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam during the Indochina War (1945–1954). Mark Atwood Lawrence, who received his doctorate from Yale University in 1998, is an associate professor of history at the University of Texas. He is author of Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), which received two awards from the American Historical Association. He is also author of The Vietnam War: A Concise International History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008) and coeditor (with Fredrik Logevall) of The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007). He is now writing a history of U.S. policymaking toward Third World nationalist movements in the 1960s. Rémy Madinier is a researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS, France) currently based in Jakarta for the Institut de Recherche sur l’Asie du Sud-Est Contemporaine (IRASEC) . He is a specialist of the history of Islam in modern Indonesia. He has recently published Les musulmans d’Asie du Sud-Est face aux vertiges de la radicalisation (with Stéphane Dovert) (Paris: Les Indes Savantes, 2003) and La fin de l’innocence? L’Islam indonésien et la tentation radicale (with Andrée Feillard) (Paris/ Bangkok: IRASEC-Les Indes Savantes, 2006). Richard Mason is research fellow at the Institute of Occidental Studies, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. His research interests include American foreign relations in Southeast Asia during the Cold War era, with particular reference to U.S.–Indonesian relations. He is currently working on a book, Containment and the Challenge of Non-Alignment: The United States and Indonesia, 1950– 1959. Edward Miller is an assistant professor of history at Dartmouth College. He is a specialist in the international history of the Vietnam Wars, and is particularly interested in how those conflicts were shaped by Vietnamese and foreign ideas about nation building. He is currently at work on a book entitled Grand Designs: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States and the Politics of Nation Build-

429

Contributors

ing in South Vietnam, 1954–1963. His work has appeared in the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, the Journal of Vietnamese Studies and on the website of the Cold War International History Project. He received his doctorate from Harvard University in 2004. Christian F. Ostermann is the director of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s European Studies Program as well as its History and Public Policy Program, which includes the Cold War International History Project (CWIHP), an international clearinghouse for Cold War research, and the North Korea International Documentation Project. He is also the editor of the CWIHP Bulletin. He won the DAAD Article Award of the German Studies Association for “Best Article in German Studies (History), 1994–1996,” and the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations‘ Stuart L. Bernath Grant and W. Stull Holt Fellowship, and has received fellowships from the Institute for the Study of World Politics, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Harry S. Truman Library Institute, the German Academic Exchange Service, and the German Historical Institute. Major publications include “Keeping the Pot Simmering: ‘The United States and the East German Uprising of 1953’” (1996 DAAD Article Award of the German Studies Association) and Uprising in East Germany, 1953: The Cold War, the German Question, and the First Major Upheaval Behind the Iron Curtain (Central European University Press, 2001). Martin Thomas is professor of European colonial history at the University of Exeter, UK. His most recent book is Empires of Intelligence: Security Services and Colonial Disorder after 1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). He is currently a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellow working on a three-year study of the political economy of colonial police violence between the two world wars. Tuong Vu is assistant professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Oregon. His interests include the politics of Vietnam and Indonesia, and Southeast Asian comparative politics. In addition to articles in Ab Imperio, Studies in Comparative International Development, Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Theory and Society, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, and other journals, he is author of Paths to Development in Asia: South Korea, Vietnam, China and Indonesia (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming); coeditor (with Erik Kuhonta and Dan Slater) of Southeast Asia in Political Science: Theory, Region and Qualitative Analysis (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008); and coeditor (with Wasana Wongsurawat) of Dynamics

430

Contributors

of the Cold War in Asia: Ideology, Identity, and Culture (Palgrave-Macmillan, forthcoming). Danny Wong Tze Ken is associate professor at the Department of History, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, deputy dean, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and head of the Maritime Culture and Geopolitics Research Unit, Institute of Ocean and Earth Sciences, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur. His research interests include Vietnamese diplomatic history and contemporary foreign relations. His publications include Vietnam–Malaysia Relations during the Cold War, 1945–1990 (University of Malaya Press, 1995) and Champa Trên Làn Sóng Báo Chí Quốc Tế từ năm 1975 (Champa in the International Printed Media Since 1975) (San Jose, CA: International Office of Champa, 2002); and “Vietnam–Champa Relations and the Malay–Islam Regional Network during the 17th to 19th Century,” Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia, no. 5 (2004).

431

Index

Abbott, George M., 23, 25, 32–33 Abdullah CD, 265 Abdul Rahman, Tunku, 266, 267–268, 270–271, 318, 393–394, 397 Acheson, Dean: aid to French war effort in Indochina, 16; and anticolonialism, 222; and Bao Dai government, 31–32, 276, 281–282; and Briggs Plan, 107; and Indonesia, 44, 58; and Johnson’s policy views, 304; and Subardjo, 363–364; and Thai foreign policy, 280, 286–287, 288, 290, 293 The Admiral’s Baby (Van der Post), 82n14 AFPFL (Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League). See Pa Sa Ba La “agrovilles” program, 269, 392 aid, military. See military aid Aidit, D.N., 359, 374n19 Ali, Mohammed, 251 Ali Sastroamijoyo, 56, 58 Allied Freedom League (Thailand), 294 Allison, John, 62 Ang Cheng Guan, 6, 301 Anglo-Malayan Defense Agreement of 1957, 266 Anthony, Shri F., 228 anticolonialism, 219–222 Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL). See Pa Sa Ba La Anti-Revolutionary Party (Netherlands), 74

ANZAM pact (Australia, New Zealand, and Malaya region), 91 Arab League, 245, 255n31 “Asian bloc,” 249 “Asian civilization,” 377, 378–383, 385, 394, 395, 396–397 Asian People’s Anti-Communist League, 389 Asian Relations Conference of 1947 (New Delhi), 245, 252 Asian Union, 209 Associated State of Vietnam. See Vietnam “Associated States of Indochina.” See Indochina Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), 232, 396–397 Attlee, Clement, 85, 86–87, 90, 101, 336 Auriol, Vincent, 27, 94 Australia: and Bandung Conference, 256n54; Communist Party of, 242; and Indonesia, 239, 240–243, 246–247, 252; Seamen’s Union, 242; and Southeast Asian intelligence, 91–93 Australia, New Zealand, and Malaya region (ANZAM) pact, 91 Bagale, U, 348 Bandung Conference of 1955, 3, 250–251, 252, 256n54, 322, 364–366, 385, 400n21 “Bandung discourse,” 137–171

433

Index

Bangkok Post on Bao Dai government, 282 Bao Dai, 15–38; and Acheson, 31–32, 276, 281–282; Associated State of Vietnam under, 210; “Bao Dai solution,” 5, 17, 18–38, 35n5, 95; and Diem, 17, 18; diplomatic dimension of policy, 18–21; and France, 18–34, 221, 276; and Hatta, 48, 230; and Ho Chi Minh, 6, 17, 18–19, 20, 23, 27, 29, 31–32, 35n5; and Indian non-alignment, 225–228; and Indonesian non-alignment, 230–231; initial difficulties for, 21–25; non-communist support for, 207; and Phibun Songkhram, 275–286, 291; reassessing, 25–34; recognition of, 51, 220, 222, 223, 226, 281; and Thailand, 275–286; and UK, 23, 24, 25–28, 35, 218; and U.S., 22–24, 28–34, 35, 43, 48, 219, 276; and Vanier, 94 Ba Swe, U, 348–349 Ba Than, 337 Baudet, Charles, 93 Beel, Louis J. M., 90 Beijing-Moscow “division of labor” agreement, 143–146, 148, 150 Berlin, Soviet-U.S. conflict in, 188–189 Bevin, Ernest, 97 Bidault, Georges, 151 “big-power chauvinism,” 162, 163 binary worldview, 172–173, 181, 182, 193 Bingham, June, 338 Blum, Léon, 100 Bollaert, Emile, 21, 22, 93 Bolshevik Party, 138 Bondan, Mohamad, 241, 246, 253n10 Bonnet, Henri, 32 Boven Digoel (Indonesian prison), 71 Bradley, Mark, 194, 197, 203n80, 203n82, 217, 235n39 Briggs, Harold, 103, 274n43 Briggs Plan, 103, 107, 118n105, 269, 273n40, 274n43

434

British advisory mission (BRIAM) in Saigon, 392 Bruce, David, 31, 33, 34 Brussels Treaty of 1948, 105 Buddhism, 338, 348–350 Buddhist Society of London, 292 Bui Cong Trung, 186–187, 196 Bulganin, Nikolai Alexandrovich, 314 Bundy, McGeorge, 304 Bureau of Special Investigation (Burma), 341–342 Burma, 335–355; Buddhism and anticommunism in, 348–350; and China, 314–316, 344–345, 347, 351; and domino theory, 314–316, 346; and DRV, 220–221, 231, 235n45; external influence on, 336–344; and French colonialism, 19; and GMD government, 335, 337, 344; and neutralism, 344–348, 351; as “new Southeast Asia–type country,” 153; non-alignment of, 208, 219 Burma Council on World Affairs, 338 Burma Film Board, 343 Burma Under the Japanese (Nu), 340–341 Burma Weekly Bulletin: on religion in Burma, 350; Thant management of, 338 Burmese Communist Party “White Flag” group, 336 Burton, John, 247, 255n37 Busch, Peter, 398n1 Butterworth, W. Walton, 30, 44–45, 277 Cabinet Malaya Committee (UK), 90, 114n40 Cabinet Office secret information center (UK), 90, 114n39 Cady, John F., 352n13 Caffery, Jefferson, 22, 24–25, 31, 32 The Caged Ones (Hla), 342 Callahan, Mary, 335, 351 Cambodia: and Diem, 386–388, 396; and domino theory, 319–321; and Geneva conference, 151–152; ICP’s

Index

policy toward, 228; and Indochina, 213, 215, 218 Cambridge History of Southeast Asia (Stockwell), 68 Canada, military intelligence from, 91, 93–95 Carnegie, Dale, 345, 346, 354n55 Cascade Pictures Corporation, 343– 344 Catholic People’s Party (Netherlands), 74, 76 Catroux, Georges, 94 Catton, Philip, 393, 397n1 CCP. See Chinese Communist Party Central Committee for Indonesian Independence (CENKIM), 241, 246, 253n10 Central Indonesian National Committee, 40 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 23, 314 Central Peace Maintenance Committee (Thailand), 285, 294 Chandler, David P., 320–321 Charney, Michael W., 6, 335, 354n44 Chazaly, Muchtar, 360–361 Chen Jian, 3, 5, 137, 219 Chiang Kai-shek, 130, 389–390 Chifley, Joseph Benedict, 92, 93, 114n47, 115n55, 242, 246 China, People’s Republic of (PRC), 137–171; archival records in, 7–8; and “Bandung discourse,” 137–171; and Burma, 314–316, 344–345, 347, 351; and “division of labor” agreement, 143–146, 148, 150; and “Five Principles,” 154, 155–156; and Geneva conference, 149–154, 169n42; and Indonesia, 41–42, 47–51; Korean and French-Indochina Wars, 146–148; and Malaya, 268; and Mao’s “intermediate zone” theory, 141–143, 149, 154–161, 165–166; and Soviet Union, 124–125, 143–146, 150, 161–165; and Thailand, 280– 281, 291, 294, 321–323; and U.S.,

57–59, 161–165; and Vietnam, 189–191, 197, 210–211 China, Republic of (ROC). See Taiwan Chinese Communist Party (CCP): and Comintern, 138–139, 140, 143; and Communist Party of Malaya, 259; and “division of labor” agreement, 143–146; and Geneva conference, 149; and ICP, 212, 214; and “intermediate zone” theory, 141–143; and liberation struggles, 86; and Mao, 139–141, 148; 1949 victory of, 128; and Stalin, 124, 132; and Vietnam, 102, 147, 190, 211; and “world revolution,” 138–140, 141, 143–145, 165 Chinese Nationalist Party. See Kuomintang Chinh Nghia (journal) on class struggle, 186 Chin Peng, 216–217, 265, 272n10, 307, 316–317, 318–319 Chou Enlai. See Zhou Enlai Christian Historical Union (Netherlands), 74 Christison, Philip, 72 CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), 23, 314 Clifford, Clark M., 304–305 Cochran, Merle: Cochran Plan, 77; Cochran-Subardjo Agreement, 60–62; and Griffin, 56; and Indonesian loan, 46, 48–49; and Natsir, 57; and neutralism, 62–63; and Roem, 53, 55, 57; and Subardjo, 59, 60–62, 364; and Sukarno, 47, 50–52, 54 Cold War: in Burma, 335–355; in China, 137–171; and Diem foreign policy, 376–402; hot Cold War of 1956–1965, 366–372; in Indonesia, 39–67, 356–375; in Malaysia, 258–274; in Netherlands, 77–80, 81; in Southeast Asia generally, 15–38; in Soviet Union, 123–136; in Thailand, 275–300; in Vietnam, 172–204

435

Index

Cold War History (journal), 135n15 Cold War International History Project, 1 Colombo Plan, 93, 115n53 The Colonial Bastille: A History of Imprisonment in Vietnam (Zinoman), 203n80 Colonial Office (UK), 85, 89, 90, 96–97, 102 Cominform, 127, 143, 187–188 Comintern: and CCP, 138–139, 140, 143; and Communist Party of Malaya, 259; dissolution of, 181, 201n34; and ICP, 174, 176; Third, 177 The Committee of One Million, 347 communism: Asian prospects for, 124–128, 134; of Ho Chi Minh, 15–17; in Indonesia, 43–46, 128–130, 356–375; international, 24, 25; in Malaya, 102–108, 259–261; of Mao Zedong, 16; and Viet Minh, 25; in Vietnam, 15–17, 172–204, 210–214. See also national communist party names Communist Party of India (CPI), 128, 130–132 Communist Party of Malaya (CPM). See Malayan Communist Party Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), 212, 214 “Confucian learning,” 391, 401n43 Congress for Cultural Freedom, 343 containment (political), 39–67 The Continuing Revolt: The Black Book of Red China (Hunter), 347 Coup Group, 277, 284–285, 292, 293, 294, 295 CPI (Communist Party of India), 128, 130–132 CPM (Communist Party of Malaya). See Malayan Communist Party CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union), 212, 214 Cripps, Stafford, 248 Crowl, Samuel E., 3, 6, 238 Cullather, Nick, 307, 313, 323

436

Cultural Freedom in Asia conference (1955), 343 Cuu Quoc (journal), 182 Dap Chuon, 387 Daridan, Jean, 32 Darul Islam Islamic rebellion, 371 “Declaration on Developing and Enhancing the Friendship and Cooperation between the Soviet Union and other Socialist Countries” (1956), 163 decolonization, 84–120; and “Bandung discourse,” 137–171; and communism in Malaya, 102–108; and Joint Intelligence Committee, 95–102, 109; and military intelligence, 91–95, 108–110; Whitehall reading of, 88–91, 108, 120n130 Defense Coordination Committee (UK), 88 de Gaulle, Charles, 3, 94, 180 de Lattre de Tassigny, Jean, 109 Deng Xiaoping, 163, 318 Dening, Esler, 106 Dewan Perjuangan (Struggle Council), 357, 371, 373n4 Dien Bien Phu, battle of (Vietnam), 264–265, 304, 311 Dimitrov, Georgi Mikhailovich, 336 Dimogareisi Pyan-pwa-ye Athin/ Dimogareisi Binnya Byan-bwa-ye Athin (Society for the Extension of Democratic Ideals), 342–343 “division of labor” agreement, BeijingMoscow, 143–146, 148, 150 Djajadiningrat, Idrus Nasir, 82n20 Djambek, Colonel, 370 Djojohadikusumo, Sumitro, 256n42 Djuanda Kartawidjaja, 308–309, 370, 372 Do Hung, 223 domino theory, 301–331; in Burma, 314–316, 346; in Cambodia, 319–321; in Indonesia, 308–310; in Laos, 323–325; MacDonald on,

Index

105–106; in Malaya, 259, 269, 316–319; in Philippines, 312–313; Southeast Asian perspectives on, 306–325; in Thailand, 321–323; in U.S., 302–306, 325; in Vietnam, 267, 310–312 Drake, Earl G., 319 duBois-Critchley proposal, 77 Duiker, William, 196–197 Dulles, Allen, 371 Dulles, John Foster, 267, 302, 304, 312–313, 322, 371–372, 399n21 Duong Van Minh, 270, 274n47 DVR. See Vietnam, Democratic Republic of Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA), 45, 47, 56–57, 59, 79 Economic Council for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE), 357 Eden, Anthony, 151 Efimova, Larisa M., 135n15, 307 Egypt, recognition of Indonesia by, 246 Eighth Plenum (ICP), 173–174, 176–178 Eisenhower, Dwight D.: Chazaly on, 360; and communism in Indonesia, 371; and domino theory, 267, 302–303, 304; and Indochina, 35; on Laos, 323–324 Ely, Richard R., 289–290 Elysée Accords of 1949, 17, 27–28, 29, 32–33 Emergency (Malayan Cold War period, 1948–1960): and anticommunism, 102–105, 260, 271; in early Cold War, 258; end of, 318, 319; and Indochina War, 261–266; JIC information on, 96; and “protected villages” program, 269; South Vietnam comparison, 267 Emergency Provisions Act of 1950 (Burma), 341–342 Engels, Friedrich, 336 EuroAsia Foundation, 1 European Recovery Program (ERP), 46

Evatt, Herbert V., 93 Export-Import Bank, 46, 48, 55 fascism, 175, 177, 180–181 Federation of Malayan Agreement of February 1, 1948, 261 Fineman, Daniel, 4, 6, 275, 307, 323 Fishel, Wesley, 376–377 Fitzgerald, Frances, 398n5 “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” (Pancha shila or Pancasila): and Bandung discourse, 165, 166; as basis of Chinese diplomacy, 154, 155–156; and Islam, 363; and Khrushchev, 163, 164; and Masjumi, 360; and PKI, 359, 361f; as state ideology, 356, 373nn1–2; and Zhou, 137, 153, 160 FLN (Algerian Front de Libération Nationale), 9, 237n78 Foreign Affairs, Ministry of (France), 1 foreign policy: of Diem, 376–402; in Indonesia, 39–42; in Thailand, 275–300; in Vietnam, 210–214 Foreign Relations of the United States, 307, 327n28 Foster, Anne L., 3, 5, 68 Foster, Rockwood H., 322 France: and anticolonialism, 220–221; and Bao Dai, 18–35, 95, 221; DRV negotiations, 20; French Union, 17, 18, 21, 22; and Viet Minh, 264; and Vietnam, 15–38 French Communist Party (FCP). See Parti Communiste Français French-Indochina War. See Indochina French Union, 17, 18, 21, 22 Friendship, Treaty of (Egypt-Indonesia, 1947), 246 “From Peace to Stability” (Burmese program), 337, 340 Front de Libération Nationale, Algerian (FLN), 9, 237n78 Front Demokrasi Rakjat (FDR, People’s Democratic Front), 358, 373n10 Furnivall, J.S., 343

437

Index

Gaddis, John Lewis, 7, 306 Gaiduk, Ilya V., 5, 8, 123, 217 Gandhi, Mahatma, 224, 243, 385, 386 Gareia, Carlos, 394 Geneva Agreement of 1954: and Cambodia, 320; and Indonesia, 310; and Laos, 271, 325; and Vietnam, 267–269, 273n32, 311, 384; and Zhou, 3 Geneva Conference of 1954, 137–138, 148–154, 169n42, 265 Gerakan Bersama Anti-Komunisme (United Anticommunist Movement), 370 German occupation of Netherlands in WWII, 70 Gibbs, Frank, 27, 95 GMD. See Guomindang government Good Offices Committee (GOC). See United Nations Gopalachari, C. Raja, 228 Goscha, Christopher E., 3, 4, 6, 63n1, 207 Gracey, Douglas, 87 Great Britain. See United Kingdom Great Leap Forward, 161 Greco-Roman tradition, 382 Griffin, R. Allen, 46, 56, 287 Group 959, 324 Guomindang government (GMD): and Burma, 335, 337, 344; and fascism, 177; and ICP, 180, 189, 190; and Vietnamese communists, 182–186 Gurney, Henry, 103, 108, 109–110, 119n113, 262, 272n10 Hack, Karl, 103–104 The Hague Agreement of 1949, 45 Ha Huy Tap, 195 Ha Long Bay Protocol, 22, 23 Harahap, Boeranoeddin, 370, 374n23, 375n44 Harvey, Barbara, 372 Hatta, Mohammad: and Bao Dai, 48, 230; and Bondan, 241; and Ho Chi Minh, 48, 231; and Indonesia, 240, 309; and Indonesian Communist

438

Party uprising, 79; and Madiun revolt, 227; and Masjumi, 372; nationalism of, 72; and Nehru, 243; neutralism of, 40–41, 50; nomination of, 370; pan-Asianism of, 212; “Rowing between Two Coral Reefs” speech, 249–250, 256n51; and Sjariffudin, 358; and two Vietnams, 229–231; and U.S. policy, 51–52, 53, 54, 57 Heath, Donald, 264 Hein, Maung Maung, 349 Helfrich, Conrad E., 73 Henderson, William, 376–377 Herring, George C., 197 Hess, Gary, 34 Hindustan Times on Indian nonalignment, 229 Hitler, Adolf, 175, 180 Hoa Kieu (Chinese living in South Vietnam), 390–391, 401n39, 401n44 Hoang Quoc Viet, 174, 196, 200n5, 201n39 Hoang Van Hoan, 227–228, 325 Hoang Van Thu, 174, 199n4 Ho Chi Minh: “adding friends and reducing enemies” policy, 183–184; and Bao Dai, 6, 17, 18–19, 20, 23, 27, 29, 31–32, 35n5; and communism, 15–17; and Communist Party of Malaya, 259; and “division of labor” agreement, 145; and DRV, 18, 223–224; and Eighth Plenum, 173–174; and GMD forces, 183; and Hatta, 48, 231; ICP dissolution by, 184, 195, 201n34, 209, 234n37; and Indian non-alignment, 227–228; and Indonesia, 229; and Lee Kuan Yew, 318; and Mus, 93; and national liberation, 2, 208–209, 212; and Nehru, 207, 225, 226, 227, 229; and Phibun, 286, 293; and Sjahrir, 209; and Stalin, 125–126; and Sukarno, 310; on Tito, 188; and Truong Chinh, 216; and Viet Minh, 17, 47; Viet Nam Doc Lap editorship, 195; and Vietnamese independence, 12n20,

Index

310–311; and Wiwatthanachai, 277; and Zhou, 152 Ho Chi Minh Trail, 312, 324 Hodgson, W.R., 91–92 Hoge Veluwe Conference of 1946 (Netherlands), 75, 82n20 Holland. See Netherlands Hong Kong, as “Berlin of the east,” 86 How to Win Friends and Influence People (Carnegie), 345–346 Hukbalahap (Philippine military unit), 267 Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan (Huk), 312, 313 Hungary, 1956 crisis in, 162–163 Hunt, Michael, 211, 217 Hunter, Edward, 347–348 Husein, Ahmad, 368–369, 370 Huynh Kim Khanh, 195 Ibrahimy, Nur el, 365 ICC (International Control Commission), 385, 386 ICJ (International Court of Justice), 269 ICP. See Indochinese Communist Party ideologies (political), 210–214, 359–364 Imperialists, 174–188 India: and Bao Dai, 225–228; and Indonesia, 239, 243–245, 252; and Japanese Peace Treaty, 59–60; as “new Southeast Asia–type country,” 153; non-alignment of, 208, 218–231, 232; and opposition to French colonialism, 19, 26; and Stalin, 130–134; and Vietnam, 218–232, 385–387 Indochina: “Associated States of Indochina,” 215, 218, 220; and Bao Dai, 30–31; “Indochina Revolution,” 151; Indochinese Federation, 213, 216; war in, 19–20, 35, 146–148, 258–274. See also Vietnam Indochinese Communist Party (ICP): “antidemocratic” and “democratic camp” views of, 187–188, 193–194; and CCP, 212; and Comintern, 174,

176; dissolution of, 183–184, 195, 201n34, 209, 212, 234n37; foreign policy of, 172, 173–174, 213–214, 216; and GMD government, 189, 190; and imperialists, 176, 177, 191, 193; research on, 198, 199n2; Seventh and Eighth Plena, 173–174, 176–178; Soviet support from, 178–180; and Vietnamese Workers’ Party, 192, 199n4. See also Vietnamese communists Indonesia, 238–257; and Australia, 239, 240–243, 246–247, 252; and China, 41–42; communism in, 43–46, 128–130, 356–375; decolonization in, 84–120; diplomatic revolution in, 238–257; and domino theory, 308–310; independence of, 40, 41, 63, 68–83, 238–246, 251, 308; and India, 239, 243–245, 252; military intelligence from, 97–99; Nehru’s support for, 243–245, 248, 252, 254n20, 254n25; neutralism in, 39–41; New Delhi conference and Lake Success, 245–247, 252; nonalignment of, 39–62, 208, 229–232, 238–257; “police actions” in, 90, 92, 98–99, 110, 117n97, 246, 247–248; and Soviet Union, 40, 41–43, 128–130, 362; and Stalin, 128–130, 134; and UK, 84–120; and U.S., 40, 247–249, 363–364, 370–371; and Vietnam, 47–51, 229–231. See also Indonesia, Islam and communism in; Indonesia, U.S. policy toward; Indonesian Communist Party Indonesia, Islam and communism in, 356–375; and hot Cold War of 1956–1965, 366–372; ideology and politics, 359–364; Masjumi and Bandung Conference, 364–366; from national revolution to Madiun Revolt, 356–359. See also Indonesia; Indonesia, U.S. policy toward Indonesia, U.S. policy toward, 39–67; and China, 47–51; and CochranSubardjo Agreement, 60–62, 63;

439

Index

Indonesia, U.S. policy toward (continued) co-opting, 45–47; “independent and active” foreign policy, 39–42; and Korea, 47–51; and military aid, 51–53, 63; and Natsir cabinet, 52–57; and non-alignment, 39–67; regional context of, 42–45; and Sukiman cabinet, 57–60; and Vietnam, 47–51. See also Indonesia; Indonesia, Islam and communism in Indonesia Calling (film), 241 Indonesian Communist Party (PKI): arrest of members, 59; and Communist Party of Malaya, 259; and domino theory, 308–310; and Five Principles, 359, 361f; and ideology, 359–361; and Indonesia uprising, 79; and Maeso, 106; and Masjumi, 357, 368; under Musso, 358, 373n8; and Soviet Union, 128; and Stalin, 130; and Sukarno, 366; and Thai communists, 323 Indonesian National Party. See Partai Nasional Indonesia Indonesian Republic, Revolutionary Government of the. See Pemerintah Revolusioner Republik Indonesia “information order,” 84, 110n1 Information Research Department (IRD), 106 intelligence (military), 90–102, 104–105, 108–110, 114n45 “intermediate zone” theory, 141–143, 149, 154–161, 162, 165–166, 171n67 International Congress against Imperialism (1927), 243 International Control Commission (ICC), 385, 386 International Court of Justice (ICJ), 269 internationalism, 2, 24, 196, 211, 378 International Research on Communist Techniques Incorporated, 347 Inter-Relations Conference (1947), 209 Inverchapel, Lord, 87 Irian Jaya (Indonesia), 40, 41, 45 Irving, R.E.M., 35n5

440

Islam, 356–375, 400n24 Isvestia and freedom of press, 360 Ivens, Joris, 241, 253n11 Japan: and Communist Party of Malaya, 259–261; in World War II, 2, 70, 71 Japanese Peace Treaty of 1951, 59–60, 363 Java (Indonesia), 75, 246, 309 Jdanov, Andrei. See Zhdanov, Andrei “Jdanov doctrine,” 358 Jervis, Robert, 301, 302 Jessup, Phillip C., 46, 47, 282, 283 Jiang Jieshi, 49, 139, 141 Jinmen islands, shelling of, 161–162 Johnson, Louis A., 280 Johnson, Lyndon B., 304 Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S., 44 Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB), 96 Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), 90, 91, 95–102, 107, 109, 113n36, 114n45, 114n47, 116n68, 117n97 Joint Planning Staff (JPS), 90 Jones, Arthur Creech, 97, 119n112 Jones, Howard, 371–372 Jones, Matthew, 8 Juliana, Queen, 80 jus soli principle on citizenship, 261 Kahin, Audrey, 371, 374n32 Kahin, George, 197, 198, 202n64, 371, 374n32 Karen-Burman problem, 345–346 “Kashmir Princess Incident,” 171n71 Kaznacheev, Aleksandr, 315–316 Kearns, Dors, 304 Kennan, George, 88 Kennedy, John F., 267, 269, 304, 310, 313, 324 Khao Thahan Phan Seuk (journal), anticommunist propaganda in, 294 Khaw Guat Hoon, 269 Khin Zaw, U, 343, 347, 348 Khmer People’s Revolutionary Party, 321 Khmer Rouge, 321

Index

Khmer Serai (Free Khmer), 387, 388 Khrushchev, Nikita, 154, 162, 163, 164, 165, 314–315 Khuang Aphaiwong, 282–283, 288 Killearn, Lord, 87 Kim Il-Sung, 218 Kislenko, Arne, 323 Kissinger, Henry, 304 Kong Decheng, 401n43 Kong Lae, 324 Konthi Suphamongkhon, 283, 284, 288 Korea: and Diem, 391–392, 396, 402n47; and Indonesia, 47–51; and Thailand, 286–291 Korean War: and China, 146–148; and Indonesia, 49–51, 52, 54–55; and Thailand, 287–289 Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party), 140, 292–293, 303 Kyaw Nyein, U, 314 Labor Party (Netherlands), 74, 75–76, 82n17 Labour Party (UK), 86, 156, 157 Lacy, William, 55, 56 Lai Teck, 259 Landon, Kenneth, 276–277, 280, 293 Langer, Paul F., 324 Lansdale, Edward, 394 Lao Dong Party (Vietnam), 311, 312 Laos: in “Associated States of Indochina,” 215, 218; and Diem, 388–389, 396; and domino theory, 323–325; and Geneva conference, 151–152; ICP’s policy toward, 228; in Indochinese Federation, 213; neutrality of, 312; under Pathet Lao, 270–271; and Vietnam, 323–325 Laotian Question, International Conference on the Settlement of the, 312 Law 10/59 of May 6, 1959, on communism (Vietnam), 311–312 Lawrence, Mark, 3, 5, 15, 86, 88 Law Yone, Edward M., 342 Le Duan, 196, 318, 320 Le Duc Tho, 196, 212, 318

Lee Kuan Yew, 274n53, 317, 318 Le Hong Phong, 195 Lei Wong Kaai, 401n39 Le Loi, 198 Lenin, Vladimir, 198, 336, 356, 360 Leninism. See Marxism-Leninism Le Van Luong, 196 Liberal Party (Netherlands), 76 Lijphart, Arend, 81n2 Linggadjati Agreement of 1947, 77, 87, 244–245, 246, 254n28 Liu Shaoqi, 128, 143, 144, 145–146, 163 Lloyd, Thomas, 104, 119n113 Lockwood, Rupert, 253n3 Lowe, David, 115n53 Lubis, Mochtar, 343 Lu Dingyi, 142 Ludu Aung Than (The People Win Through, Nu), 339–340, 341, 343–344, 346–348 Ludu Daily News, imprisonment of publisher, 342 Ludu U Hla, 342 Lukman, M.H., 359 MacArthur, Douglas, 54 MacDonald, Malcolm: on Bao Dai, 28; and decolonization, 110; and domino theory, 105–106; and Indochina War, 263; and Malaya, 25; and military intelligence, 89, 92 Mackie, Jamie, 8 Macmahon Ball, William, 92–93 Madinier, Rémy, 6, 356 Madiun Revolt, 42, 78, 227, 308, 358–359 Magsaysay, Ramon del Fierro, 312–313, 394–395 Mahachon (journal), confiscation of issues of, 294 Maitrisan (journal), confiscation of issues of, 294 Maksin, Alexei, 316 Malaya: and China, 268; communism in, 102–108, 259–261; and Diem, 392–394, 396; and domino theory,

441

Index

Malaya (continued) 316–319; Federation of Malaya, 261, 310, 317–318, 319, 392; independence in, 266–271; and Indochina War, 261–271; Malaya High Commission, 97; Malayan Union, 102, 261; military intelligence from, 91–92, 102; war and rebellion in, 25–26, 86, 258–274. See also Emergency; Malayan Communist Party; Malaysia Malayan Communist Party (MCP): British ban on, 89; and CCP, 106; and Chin Peng, 317–319; early struggle of, 259–261, 271; and Emergency, 261–263; military intelligence on, 104; and MRLA, 107, 108; and Viet Minh, 265, 269 “Malayan Overseas Chinese AntiJapanese Mobilization Society,” 259 Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), 260–261 Malayan Races Liberation Army (MRLA), 104, 107, 108 Malayan Security Service (MSS), 96, 104 Malaysia, 258–274; independence in, 259, 266–271; and Indochina War, 258, 261–271; nationalist movements in, 81n3. See also Emergency; Malaya Malaysian Plan, 271 Malenkov, Georgy, 361, 362f Manila Pact of 1954, 266 Mao Zedong: and Bandung discourse, 164–165; and CCP, 139–141, 148; and China as “revolutionary country,” 137; and Chinese intervention in Korea and Vietnam, 147–148; “On Coalition Government” speech, 140; and communism, 16, 361, 362f; and “division of labor” agreement, 144, 145, 146; and DRV, 214; on establishment of PRC, 168n21; and Geneva conference, 149; and Great Leap Forward, 161; and Ho Chi Minh,

442

207; and “intermediate zone” theory, 141–143, 149, 154–161, 162, 165–166, 171n67; and Jinmen islands shelling, 161–162; and Khrushchev, 315; “lean-to-one-side” statement, 142–143, 144, 146, 158, 162; and “Marxist League,” 336; and Phibun, 286, 291, 293; recognition of, 280, 282; and Stalin, 2, 125, 133, 141, 213, 217; and Taiwan Strait crisis, 155–156; and Tonkin offensive, 102; and Zhou, 154 Marshall, George, 16 Marshall Plan: and colonization of Europe, 187; Dutch support under, 78, 79, 80, 100, 248, 256n42; Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA), 298n54; ICP opposition to, 213 Marx, Karl, 176, 196, 198, 336 Marxism-Leninism: and Asian colonial struggle, 127; and binary worldview, 173; in China, 144, 165; Diem on, 389; in Indonesia, 357; and Mounier, 379–380; Nu influenced by, 336; in Vietnam, 186, 195, 196, 198 “Marxist League,” 336, 340, 353n13 Masjumi Party (Indonesia), 48, 52, 57, 357–366, 368–370, 372, 374n38 Mason, Richard, 5, 39, 229 Massey, C., 92 Maung Maung, U, 340 McCarthy, Joseph, 56 McMahon, Robert J., 9, 302, 305–306 McNamara, Robert S., 194, 301 MCP. See Malayan Communist Party Melby, John, 53–54 Melby-Erskine military survey mission, 43, 53 Mello Kamath, De, 225–227, 236n63 Mendès France, Pierre, 151 Menzies, Robert, 115n53, 242 Merchant, Livingston T., 287 MI5 and MI6 (British intelligence units), 95, 96, 97 Micunovic, Veljko, 315 military aid, 46–47, 51–53, 279, 287, 364

Index

Miller, Edward, 4, 6, 376 Misbach, “Red Haji,” 204n90 MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), 305 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, 175 Moore, Philip, 274n53 Mounier, Emmanuel, 379–380, 398n7 Mouvement Républicaine Populaire (MRP), 18–19, 94, 100–101 MPAJA (Malayan People’s AntiJapanese Army), 260–261 MRLA. See Malayan Races Liberation Army MSS (Malayan Security Service), 96, 104 Murray, Peter, 343 Mus, Paul, 93, 372 Musso (Indonesian communist leader), 358–359, 373n8 Mutual Defense Agreement (U.S.Indonesia), 53 Mutual Defense Military Program, 53, 54 Mutual Security Act of 1951 (U.S.), 57, 60, 364 Mutual Security Assistance Treaty of 1952 (MSA), 61–62, 63 Myanmar. See Burma Myoma Hsaya Hein, 338–339 Nagà-ni (Red dragon) book club, 336, 345, 352n2 Nam Bo Committee, 320 Nanyang (South Sea) Communist Party, 259 Narathu, King, 339 Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 251 Nasution, Abdul Haris, 309–310, 370, 372 Nation: on death of religion in Burma, 350; editor threatened with imprisonment, 342 National Defense Council (Thailand), 285, 288, 293 nationalism, 35, 72–73, 106 National League for Democracy (Burma), 351–352

National Liberation Front (NLF, Vietnam), 312, 392, 393 National Security Council (NSC), 16, 42, 45, 280, 303–304 NATO. See North Atlantic Treaty Organization Natsir, Mohammad: on democracy, 368; and Masjumi, 48, 360; Natsir cabinet, 52–57; and peace treaty with Japan, 363; and “salami tactics,” 369–370; on Soviet relations, 362; and two Vietnams, 229–230; and U.S. military aid, 364 Navarre, Henri, 264 Naw Seng, 316 Nehru, Jawaharlal: anticommunism of, 26, 221–222; and “Asian bloc,” 249; Asian Union plans, 209; and Bandung Conference, 251; on Bao Dai, 28, 224–225; China visit, 154; and Diem, 386–387; and Dutch colonial policy, 114n44; and Hatta, 243; and Ho Chi Minh, 207, 225, 226, 227, 229; Indonesian support, 243–245, 248, 252, 254n20, 254n25; and Mao, 156; non-alignment of, 10n6, 223–229, 344; pan-Asianism of, 212; and Vietnam, 22, 223–229; and Zhou, 137, 152–153, 157, 158 Netherlands, 68–83; and Cold War, 77–80, 81; domestic politics in, 73–77; and Indonesian independence, 40, 41, 63, 68–83, 240; international politics and policy change in, 77–80; Marshall Plan support for, 78, 79, 80, 100, 248, 256n42; Netherlands People’s Movement, 74; 1945 changes in, 71–73; “police actions” in Indonesia, 90, 92, 98–99, 110, 117n97, 246, 247–248; prisoner of war camps in Australia, 240–241, 253n4, 253nn7–8; World War II and occupation, 69–71 neutralism: in Burma, 344–348, 351; Diem’s attitude toward, 384–386, 399n21; in Indonesia, 39–41, 47, 50, 57, 62–63. See also non-alignment

443

Index

Neutrality of Laos, Protocol and the Declaration of (1962), 312 “New Conceptual Approaches to the Study of American Foreign Relations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives” (Gaddis), 306 New Delhi conference on Indonesia (1949), 248–249, 250–251, 252 New Guinea: cession of, 81n2; Dutch sovereignty of, 369 Ne Win, 316, 336, 342, 349, 350, 351 New Life Hamlet Program, 270 New Times of Burma, Thant management of, 338 “new village” program, 392–393 Ngo Dinh Diem, 376–402; and Abdul Rahman, 267–268; and “Asian civilization,” 377, 378–383, 385, 394, 395, 396–397; and Bao Dai, 17, 18; and Cambodia, 386–388, 396; foreign policy in Asia, 4, 378, 383–396, 399n17; and India, 224; and Malaya, 392–394, 396; and personalism, 6, 376–402, 398n5, 398n9; repressive measures of, 311–312; and “strategic hamlet” program, 270 Ngo Dinh Nhu: and “agroville” program, 392; and Chinese in South Vietnam, 390; intervention in Laos, 389; and Malaya, 393; and Nehru, 386; on neutralism, 384; and Orientalism, 382; and personalism, 380–381, 383, 398n5, 398n9; and Sihanouk, 387, 388 Nguyen Cao Ky, 270 Nguyen Chi Thanh, 196 Nguyen Duy Thanh, 223 Nguyen Duy Trinh, 196 Nguyen Khan, 270 Nguyen Luong Bang, 196 Nguyen Thi Minh Khai, 195 Nguyen Van Cu, 195 Nguyen Van Hinh, 386 Nguyen Van Xuan, 22, 23, 94, 109 Nitze, Paul H., 303 Nixon, Richard, 264, 304

444

Njoto (PKI leader), 359 NLF. See National Liberation Front non-alignment: in Burma, 208, 219; in India, 208, 218–231, 232; in Indonesia, 39–67, 208, 229–232, 238–257. See also neutralism North Atlantic Pact, 126 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 80, 90, 91 NSC. See National Security Council NSC-48/1 (U.S. State Department position paper), 16, 45 Nu, U: and Bandung Conference, 251; and Burma during Cold War, 6, 335–355; China visit, 154; and communism, 314; and Mao, 156, 157; overthrow of, 316; and Political Intelligence Group, 315; and Zhou, 137, 153, 158, 346 Nurdin, Rusjad, 365 Nyana, U, 338, 339 Occidentalism, 383 Ogburn, Charlton, 34 Organization for European Economic Cooperation, 80 Orientalism, 377, 382–383, 388, 399n15 Osborne, Milton, 308 Pakistan, Diem’s relations with, 385–386 Pancasila/Pancha shila. See “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” Pandit Nehru. See Nehru, Jawaharlal Panikkar, K.M., 227–228 Pan Malayan Islamic Party, 266 Pant, Pandit, 228 PAP (People’s Action Party), 317 Partai Nasional Indonesia (PNI, Indonesian National Party), 359, 362–363, 365, 366, 368–370 Partai Socialis Indonesia, 48, 358 Parti Communiste Français (PCF), 25, 94, 100–101, 125, 196 Parti Komunis Indonesia (PKI). See Indonesian Communist Party

Index

Pa Sa Ba La (PSBL)/Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL), 337–338, 339, 340, 348–349, 350 Patel, V., 228 Pathet Lao (Laotian communists), 270–271, 310, 321–322, 324–325 Patton, Kenneth, 277, 297n5 Pau Conference of 1950, 107–108 PCF. See Parti Communiste Français “peaceful coexistence,” 164–165 Pearl Harbor attack, 179 Pemerintah Revolusioner Republik Indonesia (PRRI, Revolutionary Government of the Indonesian Republic), 365–366, 370, 371, 372 People’s Action Party (PAP), 317 People’s Democratic Front (Front Demokrasi Rakjat, FDR), 358, 373n10 People’s Liberation Armed Forces of the National Liberation Front (Viet Cong), 270, 274n45, 345 The People Win Through. See Ludu Aung Than Permanent Under-Secretary’s Committee (PUSC), 88, 105 Permesta movement (“total struggle”), 369, 372 personalism, 6, 376–402, 398n5, 398n9 Pétain, Philippe, 179, 398n7 Pham Mai Hung, 196, 200n23, 324–325 Pham Ngoc Thach, 212, 224, 235n52 Pham Van Dong, 196 Phan Dang Luu, 195 Phibun Songkhram: and Bao Dai, 275–286, 291; and Cold War alignment, 6, 219; and DRV, 223; and Ho Chi Minh, 286, 293; and Mao Zedong, 286, 291, 293; and Thailand’s foreign policy revolution, 4, 275–300; U.S. alignment of, 218; on Vietnamese communists, 322 Philippine Communist Party, 312, 313 Philippines: and Diem, 394–395, 396; and domino theory, 312–313

Phot Sarasin, 278–279, 280, 282, 283, 284–285, 296 Pignon, Léon: and Bao Dai solution, 20, 24, 94, 95; and DRV, 210, 221; and military intelligence, 92 PKI. See Indonesian Communist Party Plekhanov, G.V., 353n13 Plion-Bernier, Raymond, 220, 221 PNI. See Partai Nasional Indonesia Point Four technical assistance program, 46, 298n54 Poland, 1956 crisis in, 162–163 Political Intelligence Group (Burma), 315 Politics and Our Democracy (Prawiranegara), 357 Pollitt, Harry, 156 Pol Pot (Saloth Sar), 320–321 Potsdam Conference of 1945, 87 Prachathipatai (newspaper) on Bao Dai government, 282 Pravda and freedom of press, 360 Prawiranegara, Sjafruddin, 357, 363, 370, 375n44 PRC. See China, People’s Republic of Press Association of Thailand, 293 Pridithephaphong Thewakun, 289 prisoner of war camps in Australia, 240–241, 253n4, 253nn7–8 “protected villages” program, 269, 273n40 PRRI. See Pemerintah Revolusioner Republik Indonesia PSBL. See Pa Sa Ba La PUSC (Permanent Under-Secretary’s Committee), 88, 105 Rakosi, Mathias, 369 Ramadier, Jean, 20–21, 125 Ramadier, Paul, 20, 93 Ramakrishna, Kumar, 103 Ramelan, Oetoyo, 247 Rangoon University, 338 “rank of Denmark,” 69 Rao, Rajeshwar, 128, 131 Rassemblement des Gauches Républicaines (RGR), 94, 100

445

Index

Rassemblement du Peuple Français (RPF), 94, 100 Rebellion (film), 348 Red dragon book club. See Nagà-ni Reed, Charles S., 22–23 Renmin Ribao (People’s Daily newspaper) on Taiwan, 154 Renville Agreement of 1948, 40, 77 Revolutionary Program (Vietnam), 270, 274n49 Reynaud, Paul, 100 RGR (Rassemblement des Gauches Républicaines), 94, 100 Richards, Robert, 302 ROC (Republic of China). See Taiwan Roem, Mohammad, 52–53, 55, 57, 363 Romulo, Carlos P., 222, 322 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 209 Rostow, Walt W., 301, 305 Rostow Doctrine, 273n26, 305 Round Table Conference of 1949 (The Hague), 40, 45, 78, 129 RPF (Rassemblement du Peuple Français), 94, 100 Rusk, Dean, 46, 56, 58, 278–279, 304 Russian State Archive of Social and Political History, 308 Said, Edward, 382 Sakirman, Njoto dan, 48, 229, 230 “salami tactics,” 369–370 Salim, Haji Agus, 245–246 Saloth Sar (Pol Pot), 320–321 Samouth, Tou, 321 San Francisco Conference of 1945, 59, 182, 363 Sang Phatthanothai, 293–294 Santiphap (journal), editor’s arrest, 294 Sao Hkun Hkio, 220 Sapsunthon, Prasoet, 321 Sarit Thanarat, 323 SARPELINDO (Indonesian Seamen’s Union), 242 Sastroamidjojo, Ali, 364, 369, 374n23 Schermerhorn, Willem, 74–76, 77, 83n28 Schoenbaum, Thomas J., 324

446

SEAC (Southeast Asia Command), 260 SEATO. See Southeast Asia Treaty Organization SEATO Agreement of September 1954, 267 Second Policy Action of 1948 (Indonesia), 83n28 Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), 95 Security Council (UN): and Indonesia, 79–80, 99, 100, 246–247, 248–249, 252; and Korea, 50, 288. See also United Nations Security Intelligence Far East (SIFE), 96 self-determination, 105, 177, 277 Seventh Plenum (ICP), 173–174 Shafie, Ghazali, 270 Shaplen, Robert, 398n5 Shared Hopes, Separate Fears: Fifty Years of U.S.-Indonesian Relations (Gardner), 81n4 Sieu Heng, 321 SIFE (Security Intelligence Far East), 96 Sihanouk, Norodom, 320, 324, 386–388, 400n28 Simbolon, M., 369 SIS (Secret Intelligence Service), 95 Sixth World Council of Buddhism, |349 Sjahrir, Sutan, 64n5, 209, 240, 241, 245, 247, 358 Sjariffudin, Amir, 358–359 Slater, Jerome, 301 Smith, R.B., 310 Smith, Simon C., 103 Society for the Extension of Democratic Ideals (Dimogareisi Pyan-pwa-ye Athin/Dimogareisi Binnya Byan-bwa-ye Athin), 342–343 Soe, Thakin, 316 Soekarno. See Sukarno Soekiman Wirjosandjojo, 359, 362, 363, 364 “Songkhla position,” 86 Southeast Asia Command (SEAC), 260

Index

Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), 258, 265–266, 313, 322, 323, 386 Southeast Asia Youth Conference of 1948 (Calcutta), 42 Souvanna Phouma, 388–389 Soviet Affairs (journal), anticommunist rhetoric and, 292 Soviet Union, 123–136; and “Bandung discourse,” 161–165; Berlin conflict with U.S., 188–189; and Burma, 315–316; and China, 124–125, 143–146, 150, 161–165; Cold War strategy toward revolution in Southeast Asia, 123–136; Communist Party (CPSU), 212, 214; and “division of labor” agreement with China, 143–146, 148, 150; and ICP support for, 178–180; and imperialists, 175–177; and Indonesia, 40, 41–43, 128–130, 362; and “intermediate zone” theory, 141–142, 166; and Vietnamese communists, 183–188, 193, 197–198; World War II alliances, 179–183, 307 Stalin, Joseph: and “big-power chauvinism,” 163; and CCP, 124, 132; on communism in Southeast Asia, 5; death of, 148, 158; deStalinization, 162; and “division of labor” agreement, 143, 144–145, 146; and Ho Chi Minh, 207; and Indonesia, 128–130, 134; and “intermediate zone” theory, 162; and Mao Zedong, 2, 125, 133, 141, 213, 217; and “Marxist League,” 336; and Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, 175; and national liberation, 186; and Phibun, 286, 291; and PKI, 308; and Soviet Cold War strategy, 124–134, 135n15; Stalinism, 43; and Tito, 10n6; and Vietnamese communists, 183, 198, 204n90, 209, 210, 213 Stanton, Edwin: and anticommunism, 292, 295–296; and Bao Dai, 33–34,

278, 282, 284; and military aid to Thailand, 279, 287; and Phibun, 285–286 State Department (U.S.): and Indonesia, 46, 51–52, 55, 56–57, 58–62, 247; Policy Planning Staff, 88 STEM plan (technical assistance program in Indonesia), 52 Stikker, Dirk, 76–77, 79, 80 Stockwell, Anthony J., 3, 68, 89, 103 Strang, William, 88 “strategic hamlet” program, 269–270, 392–393 Strong, Anna Louis, 141 Subardjo, Ahmad, 58, 59, 60–62, 363–364, 365 Sukarno: Bandung Conference speech, 250; and Cochran, 49, 50–51, 54; and communism, 309–310; dissolving political parties, 366, 367f; and Dulles, 371; and Indonesian independence, 2, 240, 243; and Jones, 372; and Madiun Revolt, 227; and Masjumi, 359, 368, 372; nationalism of, 72, 73; neutralism of, 10n6; overthrow of, 63; and PKI, 366; and U.S. military aid, 46–47, 52; and West New Guinea, 369 Sukiman Wiryosanjoyo, 57–60, 61 Sumatra (Indonesia), 75, 246 Sumual, Ventje, 369 Sungei Siput attacks of 1948 (Malaya), 317 Su That (journal): on anticolonial struggle, 185–186; establishment of, 201n43; internationalism in, 196; on Soviet conference of 1946, 187; Truong Chinh editing, 195 Taiwan: and Bandung, 154–156, 159; and Chinese living in South Vietnam, 390–391; and Diem, 389, 390–391 Taiwan Strait crisis, 154–156, 161–162 Ta Kung Pao (newspaper) on Phibun, 280–281 Tan Tai Yong, 8

447

Index

Taylor, Robert H., 349 Technical Co-operation Agency (U.S.), 62 Templer, Gerald, 103, 108 Tenet, Edward, 89 Thailand, 275–300; and Bao Dai, 275–286; and China, 280–281, 291, 294, 321–323; Communist Party of, 321; completing revolution in, 291–296; and Diem, 391–392, 396; and domino theory, 321–323; and Korea, 275, 286–291; and U.S., 275, 278–282, 286–290, 292, 295–296, 322–323 Thakin Nu. See Nu, U Thammasat University, 293, 294 Thanat Khoman, 323 Thant, U: and Burma at United Nations, 351; career background of, 337–338; and Law Yone, 342; and Ludu Aung Than, 339, 340, 341, 343, 347–348; and Nu’s Buddhist program, 349; on Vietnam War, 345 Than Tun, Thakin, 316, 336, 352n3 Thee, Marek, 324 Thein Han, U, 338, 339 Thein Pe Myint, 338, 349, 352n13 “Third Force” movement, 380, 398n9 “third way”: in India, 229; and neutralism, 384; personalism as, 396; and Philippines, 395; in Southeast Asia, 3, 208, 219; in Thailand and South Korea, 391; in Vietnam, 380–382, 383 Thomas, Martin, 5, 12n18, 84 Thompson, Geoffrey, 286 Thompson, Robert, 392–393 Thongdi Isarachiwin, 289 Thorez, Maurice, 125–126 “Three Antis”/”Five Antis” movements, 147 Tibet, Chinese occupation of, 226, 227 Time on Laos, 324 Tin, Myanaung U, 220 Tito, Josip Broz, 10n6, 188, 336 Tonnesson, Stein, 8–9, 72

448

Ton That Thien, 229 “total struggle.” See Permesta movement Tran Hung Dao, 198, 204n90 Tran Van Luan, 220 Trevor-Wilson, A.G., 23, 99–100 Truman, Harry S.: and Bao Dai government recognition, 281; and Cold War politics, 209; and FrenchVietnamese relations, 15–16, 20, 33–34; and Thai foreign policy, 280, 286, 287, 288, 290, 293; and U.S. policy toward Indonesia, 39, 43, 45–46, 51, 62, 90 Truman Doctrine, 15, 213 Truong Chinh: and Cold War alignment, 4, 188–189, 219; at Eighth Plenum, 174; foreign policy of, 213–217, 231, 232; and French repression, 196; and Ho Chi Minh, 201n39; in ICP leadership, 199n2; and land reform, 193; and national liberation, 235n43; and recognition of DRV, 211–212, 218; on Vietnam as outpost against imperialists, 192, 204n82, 214–215 Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra Al-Haj. See Abdul Rahman, Tunku Tuong Vu, 2, 5, 172, 217 Turner, William, 294–295 U Kyaw Myint, 220 U Myo Min, 338 Un-American Activities, Committee on, 347 United Anticommunist Movement (Gerakan Bersama AntiKomunisme), 370 United Kingdom (UK): and Bao Dai, 23, 24, 25–28, 35, 218; and Communist Party of Malaya, 259–263, 265; and decolonization, 84–120; and ICP, 180; and Indochina War, 263–264; and Indonesia, 72–73, 84–120; and Malaya rebellion, 25–26; and

Index

SEATO, 265–266; and Vietnam, 19, 84–120; World War II alliances, 179–183 United Malays National Organization (UMNO), 266 United Nations (UN): and Burma, 351; Charter of, 246–247; and China, 59, 147; and decolonization, 90–91; and Dutch policy in Indonesia, 99, 100; Good Offices Committee (GOC) of, 63, 90, 92, 247, 248; and Indonesia, 56, 79–80, 239, 241, 244, 246–248, 363–364; and Korean War, 50, 54; and Nu government, 344; and Vietnam, 208, 209, 224. See also Security Council United States: and “Associated Indochinese States” recognition, 218; and “Bandung discourse,” 161–165; and Bao Dai, 22–24, 28–34, 35, 43, 48, 219, 276; Berlin conflict with Soviet Union, 188–189; and China, 57–59, 161–165; Communist Party of, 185; and Diem, 377; and domino theory, 302–306, 325; and Dutch involvement in Indonesia, 69, 71–72, 77–79, 81n4, 99, 238, 247–249; and Hatta, 51–52, 53, 54, 57; and Indochina War, 16, 19–20, 264; and Indonesia, 39–67, 247–249, 370–371; and “intermediate zone” theory, 141–143, 157, 166; and Masjumi, 363; and SEATO, 265–266; and Taiwan, 155; and Thailand, 275, 278–282, 286–290, 292, 295–296, 322–323; and Vietnamese communists, 183–188, 191, 194; World War II alliances of, 179–183. See also specific presidents “The United States and Southeast Asia in an Era of Decolonization” (McMahon), 306 U Nu: Saturday’s Son (Nu), 336 U.S. Information Service (USIS), 292

Van der Post, Laurens, 82n14 Vanier, George P., 91, 93–95, 100 van Mook, Hubertus J., 73, 74–75, 82n14, 87, 99 The Victim (Hla), 342 “victim mentality” of Chinese people, 148, 149, 169n40 Viet Cong. See People’s Liberation Armed Forces of the National Liberation Front Viet Minh: and Allied invasion of Indochina, 182; Chinese and Soviet recognition of, 43; Chu Lac battalions of, 107; communism of, 25; and Communist Party of Malaya, 260–261, 263, 265; and France, 19–20, 21, 264; and Ho Chi Minh, 17, 47; Indonesian support of, 230; and international radical movements, 26; and military intelligence from Vietnam, 99–100, 101–102; propaganda of, 23 Vietnam, 207–237; and anticolonialism, 219–222; Associated State of, 207, 210, 223, 225; and Bao Dai, 15–38; and Cambodia, 237n79; and CCP, 102, 147, 190, 211; and China, 146–148, 189–191, 197, 210–211; communism in, 15–17, 172–204, 210–214; decolonization in, 84–120; “diplomatic struggle” and national liberation, 208–210; and domino theory, 267, 310–312; foreign policy of, 210–214, 232; and France, 15–17; and Geneva Agreement, 267–269, 273n32, 311, 384; and Geneva conference, 151–152; and ideology, 210–214; and India, 218–232, 385–387; and Indonesia, 47–51, 229–232; internationalist recognition of, 214–218, 232, 235n40; and Laos, 237n79, 323–325; and Malayan independence, 266–270; military intelligence from, 99–100, 101–102; and Nehru, 223–229; revolutionary vision of Southeast

449

Index

Vietnam (continued) Asia in, 208–218, 214–218, 232; and Soviet Union, 125; and UK, 84–120. See also Indochinese Communist Party; Vietnam, Democratic Republic of; Vietnamese communists Vietnam, Democratic Republic of (DRV): anticolonialism of, 219–221; and Burma, 220–221, 231, 235n45; defeat of, 35; diplomatic relations with, 93, 214; and France, 20, 35; and international communism, 25; and Malayan independence, 267, 269; national liberation of, 208–210, 235n43; and non-alignment of India, 223–224, 227, 229, 231; and non-alignment of Indonesia, 229–232; recognition of, 208, 210, 211–212, 218, 230, 233n11; and Soviet Union, 125. See also Vietnam Viet Nam Doc Lap (newspaper): Ho Chi Minh editing, 195; on support for Soviet Union, 179, 200n23 Vietnamese communists, 172–204, 203nn80–81; Cold War reception by, 188–193, 194, 199; conditional alliance with “old imperialist foxes,” 179–183, 194; foreign policy of, 210–214; and imperialist lies and socialist truths, 183–188; and imperialist war and socialist peace, 174–179; and Soviet Union, 183–188, 193, 197–198; and Stalin, 183, 198, 204n90, 209, 210, 213; support for Thai communists, 322. See also Indochinese Communist Party Vietnamese People’s Army (VPA), 311 Vietnamese Workers’ Party, 192, 199n4 VNQDD party (Vietnam), 18 Voice of the People of Thailand, 321 Vo Nguyen Giap, 196

450

Wallner, Woodruff, 30 Wan Waithayakorn, 276, 278, 280, 287, 322 Webb, James, 33, 34 Westad, Odd Arne, 8, 203n75 “White Flag” group of Burmese Communist Party, 336, 352n3 Wibisono, Jusuf, 360, 363 Wilhelmina, Queen, 76, 80 Wilopo (Indonesia prime minister), 362 Wiwatthanachai Chaiyan, 276–277 Wong Tze Ken, Danny, 2, 6, 258 Worakan Bancha, 285, 287, 288, 289 World Bank, 290 World Council of Buddhism, 349 “world revolution”: and “antidemocratic camp,” 187; and CCP, 138–140, 141, 143–145, 165; Chinese support of, 150; and Comintern, 181; and Eighth Plenum, 178; and imperialists, 175 Xiaomei Chen, 383 Yet Set-Pa-Be Kwè (Oh, How Cruel; Nu), 339 Young, Marilyn, 35n5 Yudin, Pavel, 162 “Yugoslavian syndrome,” 126 Yuthakot (journal), anticommunist propaganda in, 294 Zasloff, Joseph J., 324 Zauktho Thaung Tin, 349 Zhdanov, Andrei, 127, 213 Zhou Enlai: and Bandung Conference, 251; Cold War policy of, 150–154, 158–161; and “Five Principles,” 137, 153, 160; at Geneva Conference, 3, 137–138, 169n42; and “intermediate zone,” 157; and “Kashmir Princess Incident,” 171n71; and Nehru, 137, 152–153, 157, 158; and Nu, 137, 153, 158, 346; and Thai foreign policy, 322