We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again.

GENERAL NATHANAEL GREENE (1780)

Struggle, get defeated, struggle again. . .

MAO TSE-TUNG (1960)

This is one of a series of commentaries on theories and assumptions that dominated American military policy during the 1960s. The first of the series appeared fourteen years ago in the Air University Quarterly Review. With only two exceptions, all have been published in its successor, the Air University Review. Most of these commentaries were based on books selected by the Review Editor.

Some of the books that served as the basis for these essays, such as The Troubled Alliance by the then obscure Dr. Henry Kissinger, have become landmark volumes in the history of our troubled years since 1960. The most recent and lengthy review of the military policies of the period was based on The Roots of War by the increasingly prominent radical writer and researcher Richard J. Barnet.

Within these somewhat bookish commentaries, my views, experiences, and conclusions were carefully mingled with those of other writers. This was a successful maneuver to avoid the heavy censorship of military opinion that began in early 1961 with the suppression, for several months, of an entire issue of the old Quarterly Review which had previously been cleared for publication. Despite the obvious handicaps resulting from such censorship, and occasional penalties, there were advantages. The difficult form of the book review-essay required the citation of various sources of information and opinion, some of which were disagreeable. The practice of examining a variety of sources continues to be useful, even in the relatively free atmosphere of today.

Several years have passed since emancipation from doctrinal orthodoxy, yet we remain muted by a pall of discouragement that covers the memory of our fatally compromised efforts in Vietnam. The few who have attempted an examination of our recent failures as the first step to a more fortunate future find that their work arouses little interest. Never was there greater need for research and analysis of military policy or less inspiration to perform the task. Nonetheless, since the lessons of failure can be as useful as the memory of success, all dues to understanding, from whatever source, must now be considered.

At this moment we may find the most useful as well as the most disturbing revelations among the voluminous writings of a few dedicated radicals who have dug diligently among the ruins and records of our once grandiose plans. As they tirelessly exhume the doomed hopes of our late leaders, they are often as keenly analytical as experienced accident investigators at the scene of a still-smoking crash.

OF OUR numerous academic radicals, a few have achieved distinction for their thoroughness in diagnosing our recent military maladies and relating them to pressures at home and abroad. Among them, Professor Franz Schurmann of the University of California at Berkeley is the best informed and perhaps the most talented. His recent book, The Logic of World Power,* is as ungainly as its title, but its disorganized content, once digested, proves him a master dissectionist of our suffering souls. Beside him, the McNamara apologists who concocted the Pentagon Papers were but clumsy amateurs.

* Franz Schurmann, The Logic of World Power: An Inquiry into the Origins, Currents, and Contradictions of World Politics (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974, $15.00), xxvii and 593 pages.

Schurmann seems to have combed with his teeth the massive twelve volumes of these papers over a period of at least two years. He was pushed into this labor by an editor who first asked him to write a less-lengthy analysis and then rejected it. Schurmann readily admitted that the subject matter was too complex for such arbitrary and shallow interpretations as had been inflicted upon a wary public. His knowledge of the internal power struggles of China made him curious about those of the Pentagon and White House, and he went to work with a sort of Asiatic detachment.

It is not necessary to agree with Schurmann’s rather foreign political notions to appreciate the depth and breadth of his research. It was not confined to the Pentagon Papers but extended to numerous “rightwing” and military writings as well as Asian and especially Chinese sources, in which he is a recognized scholar. Unfortunately for his readers, Schurmann is Professor of Sociology as well as of History. He accepts some of the disciplines of history and shows respect for facts and events, but he roams all too freely over the unfenced field of sociology. Most reviewers, even among his radical cohorts, chose the easy way out by questioning his theories and ignoring his sometimes tedious but often convincing analysis of many inescapable facts.

Reading the book is recommended only to those who can spare a fortnight. Instead, reading the following capsules is suggested, along with the pages indicated for those who are curious as to Schurmann’s supporting arguments or data. The capsules are assembled under headings in the form of questions. Quotes are used liberally because Schurmann’s wording is often skillful, and some statements are so unexpected that they should be read as written. For simplification, the nonquotes are summaries of Schurmann, while my comments that are otherwise unidentified are set in italic type.

This question is usually evaded by citing “history” as the motive, but the Papers are as much interpretation as history. It has been said that Secretary McNamara inadvertently “bugged” himself with documents instead of tapes. One theory, previously mentioned in this series, has them authorized originally for selective use in an expected campaign for the presidency which would involve members of the Kennedy family and possibly McNamara himself While Schurmann mentions no such motivation, some of his comments are interesting in that connection.

“The study [Pentagon Papers] does not report on the actual operations of the [covert warfare] units during the Kennedy years,” and the Papers are “exceedingly murky about the period just before and after the Kennedy assassination.” (pp. 454, 455)

One section of the Papers is devoted to recurring plans for “phased withdrawal” of some of the more than 15,000 advisers introduced under Kennedy. That such plans indicated a move toward disengagement by Kennedy is “simply the opinion of the author of that section of the Pentagon Papers.” All withdrawal plans were accompanied by plans for the introduction of more American planes and air personnel. (p. 447)

One “deep, dark secret was not openly talked about even in the secret Pentagon Papers,” though it was announced by the North Vietnamese. This was McNamara’s removing the Pacific commander in Honolulu from the chain of command and trying to run the war directly from Washington, making it for a while “McNamara’s war, . . . politically, bureaucratically, and organizationally.” (pp. 469-70)

“McNamara’s entire policy within the Defense Department was designed to contain the military, and centralizing control in his own hands was his means of doing that . . . . The Pentagon Papers are his story, with the exuberant period of ‘McNamara’s War’ played down and the later periods of disenchantment highlighted.” (p. 476)

“The Pentagon Papers, one must remember, were commissioned by McNamara as a history of the war from his perspective. That perspective, by and large shared by the authors, was that of the office of the Secretary of Defense, . . . The Papers basically try to explain the presidential policy of securing South Vietnam through American ground combat troops.” (p. 475)

Most “explanations” of the Pentagon Papers represented them as loaded with immoral schemes and rated “X” also for violence. Little distinction was made between military and nonmilitary performances in the totally evil drama. Schurmann is more perceptive.

The top-level and decisive Honolulu conference of early June 1964 was more thoroughly reported in the press than in the Pentagon Papers, which are confused as to the date. The Papers do record, however, that both the Commander-in-Chief, Pacific, and the Commander, Military Assistance Command/Vietnam, (General William Westmoreland) opposed an increase in the number of military advisers in the field. A principal reason for their opposition, which was overruled, was “the inevitable increase in U.S. casualties.” (p. 485)

In November 1964 “The JCS [Joint Chiefs of Staff], for their own reasons, sought to avoid a commitment of ground forces to Vietnam and argued instead for punitive air and naval actions.” (p. 434) This statement is quoted directly from the Department of Defense edition of the Pentagon Papers, IV.C.A.(c), p. 37. Note the typical editorializing in the curt phrase “for their own reasons.”

The purposeful nature of the Pentagon Papers is displayed in comments on the almost forgotten first movement of combat troops to Indochina during the Laos crisis of 1962. The deployment of some thousand American troops to the northern Thai border was proposed by Averell Harriman and Roger Hilsman (later noted for their successful promotion of the Vietnam generals’ plot that resulted in the killing of Diem, a project against which even McNamara rebelled). The Papers say committing these troops “was met by exactly the opposition from the Pentagon that had been expected.” (p. 434)

“In haste, in secrecy, and in great privacy” President Johnson made his great decision. On April 1, 1965, he endorsed “the concept that U.S. troops would engage in offensive ground actions against Asian insurgents.” (p. 491. Pentagon Papers, IV.C.5, p. 59.) The Navy and Air Force were against it. Even CIA director John McCone was against it, and he was replaced. “For all their service to Johnson [in public support for his decisions], it is unlikely that any of the Army generals (Wheeler, Harold Johnson, Westmoreland) played a major role in persuading him to commit troops . . . . Johnson’s most probable confidant on the April 1 decision was Dean Rusk.” One week later a Johnson speech proposed a vast new foreign aid program for all of Indochina including North Vietnam. This was in the “finest tradition of the containment current.” The speech also implied that “Moscow could or should put pressure on Hanoi to accept American terms, a line espoused by Rusk. The carrot held out a little over a month later was the bombing halt, and the corollary of that was an intensive ground effort to secure South Vietnam,” (pp. 496-97)

There was no heavy pressure of any kind to send in troops. “In fact, Maxwell Taylor, whose military theories would normally have predisposed him toward a direct American combat role, underwent a notable shift to the right after his arrival as ambassador in Saigon. He became a forceful advocate of will-breaking bombing of North Vietnam and opposed the introduction of United States ground combat troops.” (p. 491) The Pentagon Papers state he “had been bombarded with messages and instructions from Washington testifying to an eagerness to speed up the introduction to Vietnam of U.S. and Third Country ground forces and to employ them in a combat role, . . . Taylor’s ill-concealed annoyance at these mounting pressures and progressively more radical proposals changed to outright anger and open protest. . . ,” (p. 492) “Taylor was ousted in July 1965 and replaced by the old anti-Diemist Henry Cabot Lodge.” (p. 496)

Why Did Kennedy,
Johnson, and Their Nonmilitary Advisers
Insist on Ground Combat Troops for Vietnam?

To those who were not aware of it at the time, the Pentagon Papers reveal American strategy in Vietnam to have been an indecisive “tug-of-war” between those who advocated increases in American manpower on the ground and others who would have made greater use of air and sea power. This appeared to be a military disagreement, but we have seen that it was not and that it was rather a dispute between military advisers and civilian advisers to each president. Schurmann finds that each President shifted more and more toward his civilian advisers for reasons that were political and ideological rather than military. Yet it was not basically a civilian versus military issue. Many civilians formerly in government, such as those who worked with President Eisenhower, had agreed with the military all along. Schurmanncalls these men “rollback right-wingers” and associates them generally with conservatives and Republicans. Naturally, they were not to be found in Democratic administrations. On the other side were the “containment liberals, “ who believed not in “rolling back” or blunting Communist power but rather in containing it through the use of ground forces. Aircraft, which might cause “escalation” were to be employed only in a supporting role. The containment liberals also believed, along with most public and media opinion at the time, that the nations we supported in their resistance to Communist expansion should and could be pressured into becoming politically “progressive” and “liberal.” Schurmann’s analysis of the failure of this ideology is lengthy and involved, but occasionally it is incisively expressed.

“Sending in those troops gave Washington control over South Vietnam, which is what the old New Dealer Johnson wanted as much as the New Frontiersman Kennedy.” (p. 446) The alternative to relying on President Diem in Vietnam was to introduce troops and enforce military, political, and economic reforms “that the Kennedyites were convinced would lead to drying up the insurgency.” (p. 446) “The same idealism that created a welfare imperialism gave rise to a war imperialism.” (p. 562) “. . . no centrists tried as vigorously and daringly to carry American imperialism throughout the world as the Kennedyites. The right, was strange as it may sound, anti-imperialist.” (p. 440)

“Eisenhower was never enamored of all the talk about limited war” and “he tried to keep containment-type troop commitments to a minimum in East Asia.” (pp. 290, 439) Since the Army was “the most liberal and democratic of the services” (p. 289), in the late 1950s “a kind of alliance arose between the Army and the liberal Democrats in Congress. Symbolic of this was the growing friendship between Maxwell Taylor and John F. Kennedy. . . . Taylor’s notions of limited war presented in The Uncertain Trumpet eventually led to Kennedy’s grand schemes for dealing with insurgencies. . . .” (pp. 289-90)

“Kennedy knew about the Stilwell episode in China and concluded, like most liberals in the 1960s,” that if Stilwell’s proposed reforms had been carried out the Communists might not have won. Barbara Tuchman’s book on Stilwell “makes Vinegar Joe’s commitments to Kuomintang reform seem so progressive and Chiang, backed by American right-wingers, so reactionary.” Few reviewers of the book noticed the striking similarities between Stilwell’s recommendations for Chiang and “what the Kennedyites advocated for Diem. . . . Maxwell Taylor was straight in the Stilwell tradition, and while in the 1970s he has assumed that reactionary character common among many cold war liberals, in the 1960s he was hailed as a progressive addition to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.” Regardless of what Stilwell’s program might have accomplished in China, the sending of half a million troops to Vietnam had tragic consequences. “The Army’s failure in South Vietnam was, in the end, containment’s failure.” (pp. 445, 500)

Of the separate attitudes of the three services toward the Vietnam actions, the Army’s was the most ambiguous. Although beguiled at first by Taylor’s vague predictions of “brush-fire” wars, which were not supposed to become “conventional” wars, most Army leaders remembered Korea and opposed a combat role for U. S. ground forces in Vietnam. Kennedy and McNamara had to make it clear, as Maxwell Taylor has reported, that military promotion and enthusiasm for counterinsurgency were inseparable. For this and other reasons, Army leaders who rose in prominence came to advocate an increasing ground force role in Vietnam. Johnson made General Westmoreland a personal confidant, as we shall see, until after the Communist Tet offensive. When the General requested more troops than the Congress would support, the President relieved him.

“The most primitive explanation for the Army’s enthusiasm about limited war is that since its role in modern warfare appeared to be declining, it had to find a new role and mission, and limited war fitted the need. . . .” (p. 289) “In the spring of 1965, the Army was the least of the three services. Since what counted in interservice rivalry was sophisticated hardware, the Navy and the Air Force had a virtual monopoly, . . . Vietnam gave the Army a chance. . . . And what better way of delivering air power than through helicopters, the Army version of air power (all three services were preoccupied with air power).” Johnson was fearful that Navy and Air Force proposals might bring on World War III, so “Westmoreland became Johnson’s instrument in Vietnam. What McNamara tried to do in March 1964, make the war Washington’s not Honolulu’s special preserve, now became a reality based on a personal tie between Johnson and Westmoreland as well as direct MAC/V-Washington chain of command links.” (p. 496)

Few had suspected that Johnson would see no other way out of the dilemma “than to launch a ground war which no one wanted except for a few none-too-bright Army generals.” (p. 491)

“Westmoreland’s tactics of using infantry to make contact with the enemy but moving back fast so that air power could go in for the kill seemed to make the morale factor of the infantryman less important. Unmotivated South Vietnamese could carry rifles as well as unmotivated Americans.” (p. 537)

By mid-1966 it was apparent “that the United States Army could not bring back the coonskin” as Lyndon Johnson had hoped, so Navy and Air Force commanders argued for air strikes. Phuc Yen, the lone air base for Migs in North Vietnam (and a name seldom distributed by media in the U.S., no doubt for fear of mispronunciation), was finally bombed, and the “carrier Enterprise began to steam into the Yellow Sea.” Then came the Tet offensive. It was not all the Viet Cong had hoped for, but it flattened American resolve. (p. 523) “But giving Westmoreland more cannon fodder” would have meant calling up the reserves, which required congressional support, and “the effect in a presidential election year would have been disastrous.” (p. 526)

On a visit to Hanoi, with State Department approval, in early 1968, Schurmann learned that while the North Vietnamese had not been at all impressed by the bombing halts they agreed to negotiate because Westmoreland had been “purged.” In the Communist world purges always meant a change of policy. (p. 528)

“What failed so miserably and drastically was the helicopter, so much so that the United States Army has quietly abandoned its once vaunted helicopter-based battle tactics.” The National Liberation Front managed to shoot down thousands. “In the latter years of the war, particularly after the great helicopter defeat of the Laos invasion of spring 1971, safer forms of air power were used, culminating in the use of milkrun B-52 missions to carpet bomb the enemy in rice paddies. What an ending for the mighty B-52, designed to give America supreme security with its capability to take out Russian cities and missile sites!” (p. 501)

Neither the Washington staffs, the Pacific headquarters, nor the action in Vietnam were commanded by the Air Force; yet its presence and its actions had a subtle but powerful impact during the Vietnam phase of the America-China-Russia confrontation around the periphery of the two great Communist nations. The Air Force responsibility for developing and deploying nuclear weaponry continued to support America’s declining weight in the global balance of power. The transfer, and threatened transfer, of intermediate-range nuclear missiles into less-cautious Allied countries had an amazing long-range effect, which Schurmann is able to explain from the standpoint of Communist reaction. Even more interesting at this moment is Schurmann’s recognition, based on opposition sources, of the effectiveness of the ultimate bombing attacks against North Vietnam once they were directed as they might have been directed all along.

Major shifts in the policies of the great powers since 1945 have all been related to progress in nuclear weaponry by one or more of these powers. “Nuclear subjects are taboo in America, Russia, and China because they affect the most sensitive areas of national security policy.” (p. 304) “Practical arguments about the waste of ‘overkill’ are irrelevant inasmuch as what counts is the relative balance of forces between America and Russia.” (p. 190)

“We know from the Pentagon Papers that it was established politico-military doctrine that if Chinese forces should enter Southeast Asia en masse, America would respond with (tactical) nuclear weapons, as it was prepared to do in Europe against Russian ground forces.” (p. 514) Schurmann may not be aware that Maxwell Taylor announced this policy early in 1961 at the State Department in a “nonattribution” meeting with the Washington press corps. This second nuclear dam against overwhelming Communist ground forces, announced so early in the Kennedy administration, would hopefully “shield” U.S. ground forces in Asia, exactly as was already the case in Europe. Ironically, the deployment of ground forces into Indochina was to be made practical by the same implied nuclear threat against China that was used nearly a decade earlier by President Eisenhower to bring about a truce in Korea. Again in the early sixties, as in the early fifties, the Chinese took seriously a nuclear threat, perhaps for the last time. This was not because of Secretary Dulles’s overdebated “massive retaliation” speech following Korea but because of a small nuclear deployment in the late fifties, which was little noticed in this country where it is the fashion to pretend that nuclear weapons are not dominant.

In May of 1957 the Pentagon announced the movement to Taiwan of an Air Force detachment of Matador guided missiles, nuclear-capable and with a reach of some 600 miles. To American newsmen this had no great significance, but to the Chinese and especially to Mao it was a staggering event. Mao was doubly disturbed, first by the fear that Chiang Kai-shek on Taiwan might somehow bring about their employment, and second by the fact the junior Air Force officer commanding the small Matador unit was in turn commanded by a Navy captain who soon came directly under Admiral Felix Stump of the new Pacific headquarters in Hawaii. This was “a matter far different from the known and accepted threat from the Strategic Air Command. . . . at least its command and control structure was clean and linked directly to the White House.” (pp. 269, 271, 297)

The Matadors on Taiwan and the Navy-commanded headquarters in Honolulu, along with some rather secret American missiles emplaced in South Korea, made 1957 a most uneasy year for the Chinese Communists. After a policy crisis, they decided the U.S. was at least as dangerous to their future as the Russians. Swallowing his pride, Mao in Moscow accepted the Soviet Union as the “one head” of “the Socialist camp” and asked for aid in developing his own nuclear weapons. Since Britain had just developed nuclear weapons, why not China? Khrushchev, confident in his newly demonstrated ICBM superiority over the Americans, sent technicians to China. (p. 286) Just two years later the Russians reneged and called their technicians home, thus alienating China and forcing Mao to proceed on his own. In five years he succeeded, and Khrushchev fell from power on the same day.

Other events leading to the great Russia-China schism began in the same fateful year, 1957, that saw the Matadors arrive in Taiwan. A nuclear project in Europe was similar except that this time the missiles never arrived. Secretary of State Dulles frightened the Russians by suggesting intermediate-range missiles for the German government of tough Konrad Adenauer. The Russians responed as usual by threatening moves, such as the Berlin crisis of 1958, then shifted toward détente and the meeting between Khrushchev and Eisenhower in 1959. In the end Germany received no nuclear missiles, and China received no more nuclear aid. Four years later Mao sent two emissaries to Moscow, one of whom is his present heir-apparent, but they failed to dissuade Khrushchev from signing the Test Ban Treaty. “Putting IRBMs in Western Europe turned out to be a drama in Dullesian brinkmanship which actually worked in the long run.” (pp. 268-69)

The “containment liberals,” however, tried to achieve by the deployment of ground forces what Dulles had achieved by the development and deployment, or threatened deployment, of nuclear delivery capabilities. “The containment liberals failed to realize that there was a difference between a nuclear balance of power that involved only a nuclear arms race (dangerous as that was) and one that involved the territories of countries. . . . Containment liberals implied that American forces stationed abroad would make the leaders of foreign countries more ‘responsible’ and susceptible to American control.” But “political influence can go both ways.” The liberals have ridiculed the Russian and Chinese habit of reading American right-wing and military journals. “They maintain that the right-wingers are not in control, that they do not make policy. Indeed, it has been the containment liberals who, by and large, have made policy in Washington. But policy and operations are not the same thing, and policy itself is not always what it appears to be. For the Russians and the Chinese, the American right wing was a political faction,” and sometimes “they were convinced that the pendulum in Washington was swinging rightward toward a more aggressive stance on the world scene.” (pp. 297-98)

This may be the best answer yet to the puzzling question of why deterrence has worked, up to now. Hopefully, military and “right-wing” journals will continue to be disturbing, and the more pleasant dreams of self-limiting “brush-fire” wars—such as The Uncertain Trumpet “which Mao Tse-tung read with considerable interest” (p. 267)—will no longer be distributed to chief executives, especially our own.

America’s nuclear lapse began in mid-1966, when the Russians accelerated missile production, and the reaction was moderate because of heavy commitments in Vietnam. (p. 505) President Johnson met with Kosygin in New Jersey to seek a missile agreement but got nowhere. Kosygin would talk only about Vietnam and the Middle East. The Russians needed the missiles to compensate for moving substantial forces eastward to an unfriendly Chinese border. (p. 507) Forced to accept a weakening deterrent posture against Russia and mindful of the growing Chinese capability, Air Force planners in the late 1960s shifted their concern toward East and Southeast Asia just when President Johnson, beginning to despair of accommodation with Russia, shifted his hopes toward seeking agreements with the Chinese. (p. 518 ff.)

Some months after the event, there was a report from French diplomatic sources that in the spring of 1966 “Peking had transmitted three conditions to Washington for remaining out of the Vietnam war: that America not attack China, that it not invade North Vietnam, and that it not bomb the Red River dike system.” A short time later Johnson and other high officials indicated in public speeches their agreement with such conditions. (p. 515) This understanding meant the end of the bipolar world. China’s nuclear progress would not be stopped, and Mao would not intervene in Vietnam. The Chinese army would be available as a shield for Mao during his internal revolution against other leaders of the Chinese Communist party. (p. 521) President Johnson forlornly hoped for an agreement with Russia on nuclear weapons and Vietnam. Apparently he was ready just before the Democratic convention to fly to Moscow, return as a successful “peace President,” and gain nomination. “The Russian occupation of Czechoslovakia dashed that hope.” (pp. 529-30)

Despite all inhibitory understandings with China, which blocked any “military plans to reduce North Vietnam to ashes, or to mud puddles, as Goldwater proposed,” (p. 558) the Air Force ultimately performed its basic mission. In late March 1972, after Nixon’s visit to Peking, the Communist forces launched a powerful attack against the South Vietnamese. “In response, Washington unleashed the most ferocious air bombardment in human history.” This ridiculous statement is one of Schurmann’s rare exaggerations. His following admission is more important (emphasis added): “That bombing alone enabled the ARVNs to holdout defensively in places like An Loc and to recapture Quang Tri City. . . . and then, early in 1973, a ceasefire was signed.

“As the ceasefire went into effect, the clouds of Watergate gathered in Washington. In mid-April 1973, when it seemed as if the air war might again be unleashed against North Vietnam, the storm broke. As government in Washington became paralyzed, only the ferocious bombing of Cambodia continued. . . . it was apparent. . . that Watergate marked a turning point. . . .” (p. 559)

What Was the Influence of
the Navy and Its Doctrines
during the Indochina Crisis Period?

The Navy’s roles in the Indochina war included its various functions normal to a major nonnaval war, but its influence on decisions was much more evident than during the Korean War. This was due principally to the key positions of the several admirals who commanded the Pacific theater and later to the prominence of Admiral Thomas H. Moorer. Schurmann mentions this influence repeatedly, and he is especially disturbed about the “ferocious” admirals and their continued emphasis, until very recently, on China as the major threat.

“From the perspective of the 1970s, when the United States Navy is the dominant service, it is hard to remember that until the Vietnam war, the Navy saw itself in a loser role.” (p. 490) The Navy could not qualify for a major role in nuclear deterrence until smaller bombs were developed. In the interim Admiral Arthur W. Radford in Congressional testimony strongly attacked both the “immorality” of nuclear weapons and also the designation of Russia rather than China as the principal threat. This “admirals’ revolt” against nuclear deterrence came just two weeks after Russia’s first (1949) atomic explosion. After the unpopular Korean War the Navy, again paced by Admiral Radford, shifted toward advocacy of massive retaliation, only to prefer the selective delivery of small tactical weapons for Dien Bien Phu and after. (p. 289)

By 1957 the Navy began to go along with The Uncertain Trumpet in its advocacy of quick reaction against “brush-fire” wars, with added emphasis on tactical strikes from fast carriers. Preparation for limited wars, the likely extension of “Taylor’s ‘brush-fire wars,’ “ became much more acceptable to the Navy when it appeared that such wars might be fought on the oceanic periphery of Asia rather than in Europe. (pp. 270-71)

For decades the Navy had seen China, rather than Russia, as the greatest threat to the Western World because it served as an oceanic outlet for Asian communism. “While all United States military leaders held hostile views about China, none matched in ferocity those of Navy admirals.” (p. 273) Communist China’s leaders, especially the well-read Mao and his supporters, were just as concerned about the Navy. Yet, in the early 1960s, “The Navy’s geopolitical views were contemptuously disregarded by the civilian defense intellectuals. Geopolitics was out of fashion and game theory was in. Moreover, they smacked of right-wing fanaticism.” The Navy managed to expound its views in seminars and journals, “but the dominant tone was set by the defense intellectuals with prestigious Ph.D.s who clustered around the office of the Secretary of Defense.” (pp. 424-25)

Through the Vietnam war the Pacific naval commanders, Admirals Stump, Felt, Sharp, and McCain, boldly joined with the Air Force and often the Army in urging more effective air strikes against North Vietnam, usually to no avail. From mid-1964 to early 1968, “Invariably the President would be presented with three ‘options’ (a hawk one, a dove one, a middling dawk one, . . . The middling option was invariably chosen, . . .” (p. 487) Admiral McCain continued to designate China as the major danger in the Pacific as late as 1972 (p. 1545), by which time a “new Navy geopolitics” appeared, supported by “the military most disenchanted with the Indochina war, despite the unrelenting enthusiasm the carrier admirals still showed for it.” (p. 556)

The new doctrinal split gave President Nixon new options in working with the military, symbolized by his appointments of Admiral Zumwalt and General Haig. “In 1972, it was surprising to see once bitterly anti-China Navy publications lauding Nixon’s visit to China. Not sentiment but a new geopolitics was the source of that praise. Russia, the Russian navy, and varied threats to America’s energy sources (chiefly oil) were perceived as the most serious threats to American national interests. China was seen as weak and mortally imperiled by the threat of Russian nuclear attack.” (p. 556)

Only a few years earlier “Admiral Rickover’s submarine zealotry was a dangerous challenge to traditional Navy doctrine, for it began to substitute Russia for China as the Navy’s principal enemy.” (p. 431) Such changes serve to illustrate the fact that “. . . for the military, in addition to the technical aspects of a weapons system, there was the doctrinal aspect, which so baffled and infuriated McNamara.” (p. 430) Although the “Kennedyites” suspected, “correctly much of the time, that doctrine was merely a cover for power advancement and power struggle, they never understood how vital it was for any military service.” McNamara’s efforts to base everything on “cost effectiveness,” which meant little more than more bangs per billion bucks, were doomed to fail, and “for all its inanities, doctrine was to triumph over systems analysis.” (pp. 430-31)

The United States government and its armed forces, particularly the Air Force, were skeptical of the split between North and East Asia and slow to recognize China as a separate threat. Now it is definitely real and not a “Communist trick,” but it is wise to examine some episodes of the complex relationship between Mao and his three successive Russian counterparts, particularly those events that have often been misrepresented. Many learned Americans have charged that Chiang Kai-shek sabotaged a coalition with Mao which was proposed by the United States; that the Chinese army and air force fought “on their own” in Korea; that Mao sought nuclear weapons only in desperation; that North Vietnam and China wanted the 1954 Geneva Accords that called for elections to unite Vietnam; and that American military opponents of emphasis on limited war caused escalation of the war in Vietnam. Evidence from the other side is rather different.

Mao sincerely wanted a “coalition” government in the late 1940s because his army of peasants could not manage the economy of China’s huge coastal cities; but this “would have meant, practically, that the ‘liberals’ would have continued to be a powerful administrative force in the cities. The Communists, of course, would have controlled the army and dominated the capital, Peking.” (p. 230)

“Sovietization of the armed forces began and accelerated rapidly after the outbreak of the Korean War,” a rare instance in history “of one nation so massively importing the institutions of another.” (pp. 236-37) After the strongly pro-Russian P’ eng Te-huai succeeded Lin Piao as commander, the Chinese abandoned their open squad tactics of the civil war and used “human wave” assaults such as the Russians had used in both World Wars. “Russian advisers were placed at all echelons of the Chinese armed forces. Russian pilots, as the Russians now admit, flew many of the Migs which engaged the Americans in aerial combat.” (p. 241)

Mao, whose basic doctrine is “all power grows out of the barrel of a gun,” wanted his own guns, but a shortage of heavy industry forced him to depend on Russia for the large numbers of tanks and cannon his conventional military “steel eaters” demanded. (p. 287) Along with Khrushchev, Eisenhower, Macmillan, De Gaulle, and Ms. Gandhi, Mao wanted the economy as well as the power of nuclear weapons. While he preached and leftist groups around the world demonstrated against nuclear weapons, Mao gambled his prestige and China’s power on that nation’s ability to produce them. “What Mao was saying was that if a strategic (that is, nuclear) defense capability was substituted for a conventional one, then considerable savings could be realized, . . .” (p. 256)

Ho Chi Minh and his Chinese supporters were pressured in 1954 to accept the division of Vietnam at the 17th parallel as a concession to the French. After the defeat at Dien Bien Phu the French government was anxious to withdraw from Vietnam without further humiliation. The French renounced an American plan to add a new German army to the forces of NATO in Europe, and an agreement on Vietnam was reached at Geneva. “Vietnamese and Chinese retain bitter memories of the 1954 Geneva Accords. They paid in blood, sweat, and tears for Moscow’s gains on the European front, while Moscow argued that the greater cause of world peace had been served.” (p. 226)

Exactly the same argument was tried in vain by Khrushchev five years later when he tried to mollify Mao after renouncing aid for China’s nuclear program. Again the Russian fear of Germany was involved, for the U.S. in return dropped all plans to assist other nations, especially Germany, in nuclear weaponry.

Even before the Test Ban Treaty, Washington and Moscow “began to cooperate or, as the Chinese would say, collude and compete in a new Holy Alliance to halt revolution throughout the world. But the war clouds were gathering in East Asia. . . .” (For the Russians, promotion of revolution was an expedient; for the Chinese, a sacred principle.) A larger war in Southeast Asia had become almost inevitable. “The doctrines generated during the mid-1950s in Washington had a self-fulfilling prophecy built into them. They taught that limited war was bound to come and, therefore, free men must make preparations to meet it.” The preparations developed into “a form of intervention which invariably elicited a response from the other side.” (p. 328) Kennedy had pledged to build forces for such wars, and he planned negotiations with Russia to avoid the most serious risks of their expansion. The negotiations repeatedly failed, and after the split with China the Russians could no longer deliver on a bipolar agreement anyway. In desperation, Johnson finally turned to China and reached an agreement so limiting that it produced a military impasse, withdrawal, and finally defeat.

With his nuclear program surpassing expectations and the American government fearful of his intervention in Vietnam, Mao in 1966 rejected all pleas from Communist leaders in other nations to announce even a vague “joint action” agreement with Russia and rejected an invitation to a Communist Party Congress convened in Russia. Even the astute North Vietnamese were put into an almost “hopeless squeeze” by the dispute, but they finally “managed to get China and Russia to agree to unrestricted transport of Russian supplies across China.” (p. 517) Obviously, Mao hated the Russians. He announced that the Russians had been “imperialists” ever since World War II. This term is usually reserved by the left, especially the American left, for Americans.

The Russians supported India in its war against China and encouraged nomadic tribes to revolt in China’s Sinkiang nuclear development area. The split became wider until it produced a small war in 1969. Hatred for the Soviet Union seemed to outweigh “every other foreign policy consideration in [Mao’s] mind. Russian hatred of Mao personally has by now reached the levels of what they felt for Hitler, and their descriptions of him are increasingly put in Hitlerian terms.” (p. 347)

So it went. Yet Mao’s personal strong feelings on the matter were, and are, so influential that the question of his successor may be the world’s most important personnel problem.

“Kennedy had just signed the momentous Test Ban Treaty with the Russians in the face of bitter opposition from his own military, yet the entire global political structure that that treaty promised to generate could crumble in the face of a Chinese atomic bomb.” (p. 391) Roger Hilsman takes credit for (among other things) suggesting disarmament talks with China, but nothing had indicated that China had “the slightest intention of ‘disarming’“ except on hopeless conditions. (p. 392) So far as Kennedy was concerned, “there were only two feasible alternatives to dealing with the looming Chinese nuclear threat: either take them out militarily or work with the Russians to somehow contain China.” But Ruussia’s influence over China was “mortally threatened” by their dispute. Such loss of power by Khrushchev, who was working with Kennedy toward a stable bipolar world, “would automatically mean a loss of power for Kennedy.” (p. 393)

“Since the Kennedy Administration was rich in intellectual talent, hundreds of brains were put to work . . . . One of the ideas that emerged was that it might be possible to force the Chinese to sign the treaty by exerting pressure on them at escalating levels of severity. At some point, the Chinese might face the choice of either signing the treaty or seeing some of their prize developmental projects go up in smoke. This approach was called ‘graduated escalation.’“ At a conference in August 1964, Schurmann “heard one learned Harvard defense economist propose ‘graduated escalation’ “. . . . When a horrified Australian suggested it would require a declaration of war, the learned economist replied, “We can arrange for that too.” Schurmann was also asked by “some similarly learned members of the RAND Corporation” to help with some of the game problems that would be involved. “What was exciting about this notion to the mathematically minded defense intellectuals of the time was that it fitted beautifully into game theory.” And yet, “Despite the Harvard economist’s comment about declarations of war, the central notion of all the policies dominant in Washington was that there could no longer be war in the modern world.” (p. 395)

Graduated escalation had appealed to the “Kennedyites” because as a tactic it had to be applied “by and through the concentrated power of the Presidency. . . as the President points to this, that, and other targets and his generals humbly obey.” (p. 396) This theme may explain McNamara’s practice, which cost several American planes and crews, of deleting targets, some of them antiaircraft targets, from carefully planned missions. Unable to select targets, he could at least maintain his prerogatives by eliminating them.

Writing from Peking in late 1972, Joseph Alsop stated that the Russians three years earlier had vainly asked for U.S. support in an attack on China, but this was years after all serious discussion of the matter had ceased in the United States. (p. 379) Wisely or unwisely, as future events will determine, the “graduated escalation” idea was soon dropped, even though it had been publicly presented as a viable plan by Kennedy friends, such as Stewart Alsop. “Some residue of nonacademic common sense that remained in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations finally convinced policymakers that what worked in the equations of the game theorists might not work in practice.” (p. 397) And yet, although in his last days Kennedy seemed to hope for withdrawal from Vietnam “. . . it is equally possible that even with such a withdrawal he would have ordered graduated strikes against China to resolve the nuclear dilemma once and for all.” (p. 397)

When Russian and Chinese forces clashed on the Ussuri River in 1969, the idea of willfully warring with China was out of the question. An American involvement in Asia would give Russia a free hand elsewhere in the world. (p. 507)

Israel is not precisely a part of the containment policy, although “Israel’s tough armed forces play a crucial role in the anti-Soviet balance of forces in the Middle East.” The commitment to Israel was ideological because it “clearly went against United States material interests in the region.” (p. 534) China is, for reasons not well explained, “a vociferous champion of the Arabs” and an “implacable foe” of the Israelis. Russia has followed the same line . . . . for reasons also inconsistent with their ideology, since few governments are more “reactionary” than those of the Arab states. “

That Jews were numerous, wealthy, and powerful in America was an obvious reason for the commitment to Israel, but not the only one. . . . Israel exemplified what the Democratic party’s ideology had been preaching since the beginning of the cold war: that a progressive, socialistic, pro-American and noncommunist state could arise. In spite of Israel’s special circumstances, it seemed that the same could eventually happen throughout the Third World.” (p. 534) But times have changed. “Gone are the rapturous days of the kibbutzim or United States labor leaders planting trees in the Judaean hills.” Now a substantial part of American society, especially youth, has turned inward. The new ideology operating in Washington is “one that does not require the same kind of popular support. . . .” (pp. 534-35)

Ten years ago Mao told Edgar Snow “I shall soon see God,” but he did not die. He went on to launch and win the still unbelievable “cultural revolution,” which insured that he will never become “just an old Buddha” as he once feared. Perhaps his final great achievement was to stabilize his relations with the United States against the threat of Russia. What now is the legacy of Mao’s popular gospel of endless revolution, backed by enormous destructive power poised against the other great nations of the world, most of them relatively short of manpower? Most Sinologists know a great deal less about China than does Schurmann, for few have studied that mystery as much. Before considering one of his rare speculations about the future, it is interesting to examine one of his most basic beliefs.

When writing as a reasonably disciplined historian, Schurmann refuses to pose as a prophet or prognosticator. His analyses of past events are generally based on wide and profound research that has produced sound evidence. His sociopolitical theorizing may be overlooked, as may most such exercises. We have overlooked it here. However, Schurmann is a most urbane and reasonable representative of a large segment of our academic and intellectual establishment that deserves attention not only in spite of its surprising doctrinal dogmas but also because of them. Schurmann’s frankness about his faith in one prophet, the theorist Marx, together with his unstinting admiration for a lifelong militarist and ruthless conqueror, Mao, makes him a brilliant phenomenon that no doubt will grow upon us.

It may be said that higher educators are as frustrated by their welter of repetitive verbiage as are political and military leaders by the recurrent pressures and restrictions that cripple their effectiveness. Some academics and intellectuals accept their passive role with equanimity, others jealously regard all power as evil and veer toward anarchism, while still others identify with symbols of power and become “Kennedyites,” Leninists, Gaullists, Maoists, or whatever.

Mao Tse-tung during his long life has developed a charisma comparable to that of Mohammed or Napoleon in that he possesses a fundamentalist faith in true prophet Marx as an inspiration to bloody revolution, a long record of military triumphs against great odds, unmatched talents for political survival and control, and even a thoroughly destructive philosophy for export to other nations. To top it all, throughout the rise and fall of other great leaders, he has ruled the world’s most populated nation, which is also the most venerable civilization of the mystic East.

“Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” would be appropriate for Mao but has limited appeal. “Look on my mutable methods, ye unmighty, and arise to overthrow all others!” is Mao’s message. Some have looked and despaired, but more have looked, even from afar, and, disconsolate or bored with their own surroundings, have come to worship what they saw. Mao speaks in parables and riddles to underdeveloped minds, and although he wisely reads more than he writes, his red “poor farmer’s almanac” has outsold both Marx and Lenin. His cult has many adherents who will be with us long after Moo himself has gone to displace Confucius in heaven even as he has on earth.

“Nothing has influenced my political thinking so much as years of immersion in the writings of the Chinese Communists, both formal, like the canonical works of Mao Tse-tung, and the hundreds of mundane pieces in the daily newspapers.” (p. 563) Schurmann now believes “the greatest man of vision of the twentieth century who is also an effective leader and unifier is Mao.” (p. 535) Schurmann does not call himself a Maoist, but he does say “I am not a Leninist” and indicates frequently that he is a Marxist. “One cannot be a Marxist without believing in the inevitability and desirability of popular revolution. And it is only self-delusion to think of revolution as anything but bloody civil war, which no sane person would wish upon his own people. But Marx argued—as have Lenin and Mao Tse-tung—that ruling classes will devour themselves in violent competition, destroying what they themselves have built. Thus, revolution occurs only when the people finish the process of destruction and begin building a new society.” (pp. 563-64) Revolution, then, is desirable because it is inevitable, and it is inevitable because Marx, Lenin, and Mao said so. In Schurmann’s view, Marx, Lenin, and Mao cannot all be wrong. Though he modifies Marx and has doubts about Lenin, he does not fault Mao. Mao’s great contribution is the “notion” of the “uninterrupted revolution.”

“Mao has always been primarily concerned with the revolution in his own country, and that concern has made the People’s Republic of China one of the most exciting, experimental, and extraordinary societies in a world increasingly made up of dullness or bloodiness.” (pp. 280-81) On balance, it should be noted that American TV producers are busily demonstrating that dullness and bloodiness can be combined, and that some witnesses have judged Moo’s China to be an equally successful combination of the two in real life. Crimson banners can relieve the drabness of a billion brown blouses, yet blood itself is the surest relief, as in all sternly regimented societies. At home the bloodlettings of uninterrupted revolution designed to keep the nation healthy are kept under control by the ever present army, but when Maoism is exported, it seeks to avoid controls. Schurmann, in one passage, frankly describes this threat.

“In the 1960s, the Chinese were seen as the world’s greatest troublemakers, . . . American liberals at the time were furious that the Chinese were stirring up flames of revolt in Latin America where they had no interests whatsoever, not to mention the doings of Che Guevara. As the New Left began to emerge in the advanced countries, the very word ‘Maoism’ came to mean a kind of anarchist, ultraleftist troublemaking-for-troublemaking’s-sake. And when the New Left began to clash with the older communist parties, as in France, China was invoked as a new Marxist Rome sanctioning this path to revolution.” (p. 369)

The Maoist New Left is less active around the globe today as freakish groups practice more desperate terrorism, but the growing power and prestige of China could revive it. The intellectual New Left in America, which aspired to scourge the campuses during the years of the draft, overreached itself in frenzy and lost most of its overblown academic respectability; but pilgrimages to Peking could attract far more Leftists than ever paid homage to Castro. The lull in all this activity may be exhaustion after the excesses of the Vietnam period. In any case, domestic Maoism was never the major danger. Ideologies have their limitations while nuclear weapons have none, and we have all but despaired of trying to match or to counter the power of new systems of nuclear missiles poised against us. On this the usually cheerful Schurmann makes a chilling observation, perhaps boastful, perhaps prophetic.

In the 1960s “. . . the line from Washington went, the Chinese were fomenting wars of liberation, . . . to make trouble for the free world. More darkly in the background was the specter of a billion Chinese armed with nuclear weapons ready to blow up the world in pursuit of their mad revolutionary ambitions. However distorted this image, there was considerable truth to it. Mao was and remains a revolutionary. He considers revolution a good thing for peoples, countries, and individuals. . . . On the other hand, for all his alleged deprecation of the destructiveness of nuclear weapons, Mao made China a nuclear country.” (p. 288)

Brigadier General Noel F. Parrish, USAF (Ret), (Ph.D., Rice University), is Assistant Professor of History at Trinity University. He served two tours with the 13th Attack Squadron, a tour as an enlisted pilot with the First Transport Squadron, and three tours as commander of air training bases, including Tuskegee. Later he was Air Deputy at the NATO Defense College and became Air Deputy for military assistance for Europe and the Middle East. He served two tours as Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff, USAF, and retired as Director, Aerospace Studies Institute, Air University. General Parrish is a graduate of Air Command and Staff College and Air War College.

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

Surprising Views from the Far East Left