-Caveat Lector-
from LETS digest 28
-----
As always, Caveat Lector.
Om
K
--[b]--
Page 956
Jerome Green is a symbol of much more than the Wall Street
influence in the IPR. He is also a symbol of the relationship between
the financial circles of London and those of the eastern U.S. which
reflects one of the most powerful influences in 20th century American
and world history. The two ends of this English-speaking axis have
sometimes been called, perhaps facetiously, the English and American
Establishments. There is, however, a considerable degree of truth
behind the joke, a truth which reflects a very real power structure.
It is this power structure which the Radical Right in the U.S. has
been attacking for years in the belief they are attacking the
Communists. These misdirected attacks did much to confuse the American
people in 1948-1955. By 1953 most of these attacks had run their
course. The American people, thoroughly bewildered at the widespread
charges of twenty years of treason and subversion, had rejected the
Democrats and put into the White House a war hero, Eisenhower. At the
time,two events, one public and one secret, were still in process. The
public one was the Korean War; the secret one was the race for the
thermonuclear bomb.
CHAPTER XVIII: NUCLEAR RIVALRY AND COLD WAR,
RACE FOR THE H-BOMB 1950-1957
Page 965
On March 1, 1954, we exploded our first real thermonuclear bomb
at Bikini atoll. It was a horrifying device which spread death-dealing
radioactive contamination over more than 8,000 square miles and
injurious radiation over much of the world.
Page 968
To prepare public opinion to accept use of the H-bomb, if it
became necessary, Strauss sponsored a study of radioactive fallout
whose conclusion was prejudged by calling it "Project Sunshine." By
selective release of some evidence and strict secrecy of other
information, they tried to establish in public opinion that there was
no real danger to anyone from nuclear fallout even in all-out nuclear
war. This gave rise to controversy between the scientists and the
Administration on the danger of fallout.
The Eisenhower through the Dulles doctrine of "massive
retaliation" was so deeply committed to nuclear war that it could not
permit the growth of public opinion which would refuse to accept the
use of nuclear weapons because of objections to the danger of fallout
to neutrals and non-combatants. By 1953, this struggle became so
intense that supporters of massive retaliation decided they must
destroy the public image and public career of Oppenheimer.
THE KOREAN WAR AND ITS AFTERMATH, 1950-1954
Page 970
The emphasis on nuclear retaliation to Communist aggression
anywhere in the world made it necessary to draw a defence perimeter
over which such aggression would trigger retaliation. At the
insistence of MacArthur, that perimeter was drawn to exclude Korea,
Formosa and Mainland China; accordingly, all American forces had been
evacuated from South Korea in June 1949.
Page 971
The Soviet Union interpreted this to mean that the U.S. would
allow South Korea to be conquered by the North. Instead, when Russia,
through its satellite North Korea, sought to take Korea, this game
rise to an American counteraction.
Page 972
For forty-eight hours after the Korean attack, the world
hesitated, awaiting America's reaction. Truman immediately committed
American air and sea forces in the area south of 38 degrees and
demanded a UN condemnation of the aggression. Thus, for the first time
in history, a world organization voted to use collective force to stop
armed aggression. This was possible because the North Korean attack
occurred at a time when the Soviet delegation was absent from the UN
Security Council, boycotting it as a protest at the presence of the
delegation from Nationalist China. Accordingly, the much-used Soviet
veto was unavailable.
Page 974
The frontier was reached by UN forces as the month ended. The Red
Chinese decision to intervene was made nine days after American troops
crossed the 38th parallel into North Korea. It was inevitable as Red
China could hardly be expected to allow the buffer North Korean state
to be destroyed and American troops to occupy the line of the Yalu. As
soon as it became clear that American forces would continue past the
38th parallel to the Yalu, the Chinese intervened, not to restore the
38th parallel frontier but to clear the U.N. forces from Asia
completely.
Page 975
The Truman Administration, after the victory at Inchon, did not
intend to stop at the 38th parallel and hoped to reunite the country
under the Seoul government. It is probable that this alone triggered
the Chinese intervention.
On October 9, 1950, two of MacArthur's planes attacked a Russian
air base sixty-two miles inside Russian territory.
Page 977
After Truman removed MacArthur, Republican leaders spoke publicly
of impeaching the President. Senator William Jenner said: This country
today is in the hands of a secret inner coterie which is directed by
agents of the Soviet Union. We must cut this whole cancerous
conspiracy out at once. Our only choice is to impeach the president
and find out who is the secret invisible government which has so
cleverly led our country down the road to destruction."
Page 979
On the whole, neo-isolationist discontent was a revolt of the
ignorant against the informed or educated, of the nineteenth century
against the insoluble problems of the twentieth, of the Midwest of Tom
Sawyer against the cosmopolitan East of J.P. Morgan and Company, of
old Siwash against Harvard, of the Chicago Tribune against the
Washington Post or New York Times, of simple absolutes against complex
relativisms, of immediate final solutions against long-range partial
alleviations, of frontier activism against European though, a
rejection, out of hand, of all the complexities of life which had
arisen since 1915 in favor of a nostalgic return to the simplicities
of 1905, and above all a desire to get back to the inexpensive,
thoughtless, and irresponsible international security of 1880.
Page 980
This neurotic impulse swept over the U.S. in a great wave in the
years 1948-1955, supported by hundreds of thousands of self-seeking
individuals, especially peddlers of publicity and propaganda, and
financed no longer by the relatively tied-up funds of declining Wall
Street international finance, but by its successors, the freely
available winnings of self-financing industrial profits from such new
industrial activities as air power, electronics, chemicals, which
pretended to themselves that their affluence was entirely due to their
own cleverness. At the head of this list were the new millionaires led
by the Texas oil pluggers whose fortunes were based on tricky tax
provisions and government-subsidized transportation systems.
Page 982
The Kremlin was quite wiling to keep America's men, money, and
attention tied down in Korea.
Page 985
During Truman's last four budgets, expenditures on national
security increased from $13 billion in 1950 to $50 billion in 1953.
THE EISENHOWER TEAM, 1952-1956
Page 986
The Korean War disrupted the pleasures of the postwar economic
boom with military service, shortages, restrictions and cost-of-living
inflation which could not help but breed discontent. And through it,
all the mobilized wealth of the country, in alliance with most of the
press, kept up a constant barrage of "Communists in Washington,"
"twenty years of treason." In creating this picture, the leaders of
the Republican Party totally committed themselves to the myths of the
neo-isolationists and of the Radical Right.
In June 1951, Senator McCarthy delivered a speech in the Senate
of 60,000 words attacking General Marshall as a man "steeped in
falsehood" who has "recourse to the lie whenever it suits his
convenience," one of the architects of America's foreign policy made
by "men high in Government who are concerting to deliver us to
disaster, a conspiracy so black that when it is finally exposed, its
principals shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all
honest men."
Page 987
Eisenhower had no particular assets except a bland and amiable
disposition combined with his reputation as a victorious general. He
also had a weakness, one which is frequently found in his profession,
the conviction that anyone who has become a millionaire, even by
inheritance, is an authoritative person on almost any subject.
Page 988
If elected, he would go to Korea to make peace. Although himself
not a neo-isolationist or a reactionary, Eisenhower had few deep
personal convictions and was eager to be president. When his advisers
told him that he must collaborate with the Radical Right, he went all
the way, even to the extent of condoning McCarthy's attack on General
Marshall when he, under McCarthy's pressure, removed a favorable
reference to Marshall from a Wisconsin speech.
Eisenhower allotted the functions of government to his Cabinet
members ("eight millionaires and a plumber").
Page 991
Attorney General Herbert Brownell confided to a businessmen's
luncheon in Chicago that President Truman, knowing that Harry Dexter
White was a Russian spy, had promoted him from assistant secretary of
the treasury to executive director of the U.S. Mission to the
International Monetary Fund in 1946. The House Committee on Un-
American activities at once issued a subpoena to the ex-President to
testify which was ignored.
McCarthy's attacks on the U.S. Information Agency overseas
libraries led to burning of books like Tom Sawyer and Robin Hood as
subversive (Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor,
clearly a Communist tactic).
Page 992
Dulles publicly announced the conception of "massive retaliation"
before the Council on Foreign Relations on January 12, 1954.
Page 995
W.L. Borden wrote a letter to J. Edgar Hoover stating that "J.
Robert Oppenheimer is an agent of the Soviet Union." This charge was
supported by a biased rehash of all the derogatory stories about
Oppenheimer and was made up of wild charges which no responsible
person has ever been willing to defend." On the basis of this letter
and at the direct order of President Eisenhower, Chairman Strauss
suspended Oppenheimer's security clearance.
Page 998
Broadest of the three narrowing circles of outlook was a violent
neurotic rebellion of harassed middle-class persons against a long-
time challenge to middle-class values arising from depression, war,
insecurity, science, foreigners, and minority groups of all kinds.
Public opinion always supported large defence forces.
Public opinion gave much less support to foreign aid.
These statements based on public opinion polls.
THE RISE OF KHRUSHCHEV, 1953-1958
Page 1009
Immediately after Stalin's death, the "collective leadership" was
headed by Malenkov, Beria and Molotov. Malenkov supported a policy of
relaxation with increased emphasis on production of consumers goods
and rising standards of living, as well as increased efforts to avoid
any international crises which might lead to war; Beria supported a
"thaw" in internal matters, with large-scale amnesties for political
prisoners as well as rehabilitation of those already liquidated;
Molotov continued to insist on the "hard" policies of Stalin with no
relaxation of domestic tyranny.
Page 1010
Wild rumors and and some relaxation, at Beria's behest, in East
Germany, gave rise to false hopes and on June 16, 1953, these workers
rose up against the Communist government. These uprising were crushed
with the full power of the Soviet occupation armored divisions. Using
this as an excuse, the Kremlin leaders suddenly arrested Beria and
shot him.
The overthrow of the master of terror was followed by an
extensive curtailment of the secret police and its powers. Secret
courts were abolished.
Page 1011
The gradual elimination of Molotov found Khrushchev as the
champion of "thaw" in the Cold War.
Page 1012
Khrushchev's six-day visit to Tito is of great importance because
it showed Russia in an apologetic role for a major past error and
because it reversed Stalin's rule that all Communist parties
everywhere must follow the Kremlin's leadership such that "differences
in the concrete application of Socialism are the exclusive concern of
individual countries." En route home, he stopped in Sofia and place
the fuse in another, even larger, stick of dynamite, by a secret
denunciation of Stalin personally as a bloodthirsty tyrant. Back in
Moscow, Khrushchev won over the majority by arguing that the loyalty
of the satellites, and especially their vital economic cooperation,
could be ensured better by a loose leash than by a club.
Page 1013
The Russians spoke favorably about disarmament which, to them,
meant total renunciation of nuclear weapons and drastic cuts in ground
forces, a combination which would make the United States very weak
against Russia while leaving Russia still dominant in Europe.
Page 1012
The Geneva Conference discussions were conducted in an
unprecedented atmosphere of friendly cooperation which came to be
known as the "Geneva spirit" and continued for several years and was
never completely overcome even when matters were at their worst
following the U-2 incident of 1960 and the Cuban crisis of 1962.
Page 1016
At the Twentieth Party Congress in February 1956, the first
speech of 50,000 words delivered by Khrushchev over seven hours urged
the need for coexistence with the West and references to the
possibility of peaceful rather than revolutionary change from
capitalism to Socialism.
The real explosion came at a secret all-night session on July 24
in a 30,000 word speech where Khrushchev made a horrifying attack on
Stalin as a bloodthirsty and demented tyrant who had destroyed tens of
thousands of loyal party members on falsified evidence. The full
nightmare of the Soviet system was revealed.
Page 1017
A few passages from this speech:
"This concept "enemy of the people" eliminated any possibility of
rebuttal. Usually, the only evidence used, against all the rules of
modern legal science, was the confession of the accused, and as
subsequent investigation showed, such "confessions" were obtained by
physical pressure on the accused. The formula "enemy of the people"
was specifically introduced for the purpose of physically annihilating
these persons.
How is it that a person confesses to crimes that he has not
committed? Only in one way - by application of physical pressure,
tortures, taking away of his human dignity.
Page 1019
The "secret speech" also destroyed Stalin's reputation as a
military genius:
"Stalin said that the tragedy of the war resulted from the
unexpected attack by the Germans. This is completely untrue. Churchill
warned Stalin that the Germans were going to attack. Stalin took no
had and warned that no credence be given to information of this sort
not to provoke a German invasion. Had our industry been mobilized
properly and in time to supply the army, our wartime losses would have
been decidedly smaller.
Very grievous consequences followed Stalin's destruction of many
military commanders during 1937-1941 because of his suspiciousness and
false accusations. During that time, leaders who had gained military
experience in Spain and the Far East were almost completely
liquidated.
Page 1021
Stalin's 1948 "Short Biography" is an expression of most
dissolute flattery, making a man into a god, transforming him into an
infallible sage, "the greatest leader and most sublime strategist of
all times and nations." We need not give examples of the loathsome
adulation filling this book. They were all approved and edited by
Stalin personally. He added "Although he performed his task of leader
of the people with consummate skill and enjoyed the unreserved support
of the whole Soviet people, Stalin never allowed his work to be marred
by the slightest hint of vanity, conceit, or self-adulation." I'll
cite one more insertion by Stalin: "Comrade Stalin's genius enabled
him to divine the enemy's plans and defeat them. The battles in which
Comrade Stalin directed the Soviet armies are brilliant examples of
operational military skill." "
Page 1022
By directing all the criticism of Stalin personally, he
exculpated himself and the other Bolshevik survivors who were fully as
guilty as Stalin was - guilty not merely because they acquiesced in
Stalin's atrocities from fear, as admitted in Khrushchev's speech, but
because they fully cooperated with him.
A study of Khrushchev's life shows that he defended Stalin's acts
which caused the deaths of millions. The fault was not merely with
Stalin; it was with the system, it was with Russia.
The more completely total and irresponsible power is concentrated
in one man's hands, the more frequently will a monster of sadism be
produced.
The very structure of Russian life drove Khrushchev, as it had
driven Stalin, to concentrate all power in his own hands. Neither man
could relax halfway to power for fear that someone else would continue
on, seeking the peak of power. The basis of the whole system was fear
and like all neurotic drives in a neurotic system, such fear could not
be overcome even by achievement of total power. That is why it grows
into paranoia as it did with Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Paul
I, Stalin and others.
Page 1031
Having failed to block Khrushchev's economic plans, his rivals in
the Presidium were reduced to a last resort, they had to get rid of
the man himself. At a Presidium meeting on June 18, 1957, the motion
was made to remove Khrushchev as the first party secretary. The
discussion grew violent with Malenkov and Molotov attaching and
Khrushchev defending himself. He was accused of practicing a "cult of
personality" and of economic mismanagement. The vote was 7-4 against
him with Mikoyan, Kirichenko and Suslov his only supporters. He was
offered the reduced position of minister of agriculture.
Page 1032
Khrushchev refused to accept the result, denying that the
Presidium had the authority to remove a first secretary, and appealing
to the Central Committee. The members of this larger group joined in
the discussions as they arrived while Khrushchev's supporters sought
to delay the vote until his men could come in from the provinces.
Marshall Zhukov provided planes to bring in the more distant ones. The
discussion became bitter when Zhukov threatened to produce evidence
that Malenkov and Molotov had been deeply involved in the bloody
purges of 1937. Madame Furtseva, an alternate member of the Presidium,
filibustered with a speech for six hours. Eventually, there were 309
members present. When the vote was finally taken, Khrushchev's
supporters voted for him solidly and his removal, already voted by the
Presidium, was reversed. Khrushchev at once counterattacked. He moved
and carried the expulsion from the Presidium of Malenkov, Molotov,
Kaganovich and Shepilov for "anti-party" activities. Then came the
election of a new Presidium with fifteen full members instead than the
previous eleven, and nine alternates instead of the previous six.
This change was Khrushchev's most smashing personal victory and
the most significant event in Russia's internal history. It led
Khrushchev to a position of political power more complete than
Stalin's had been although it was clear that Khrushchev would never be
allowed to abuse his power the way Stalin had done.
Page 1033
Khrushchev did not rest on his oars. During the summer of 1957,
he made notable concessions to the peasants (ending compulsory
deliveries from products of their personal plots), slammed down the
lid on freedom of writers and artists, pushed vigorously both the
"virgin lands" scheme and the decentralization of industry, and worked
to curtail the growing autonomy of the armed forces and revived trade
unions into the new regional economic councils.
Page 1034
Russian objection to city-bombing or to strategic terror of the
V-2 kind as ineffective and a waste of resources was undoubtedly
sincere.
The Soviet Union has no idea of being able to achieve military
victory over the United States simply because they have no method of
occupying the territory of the United States at any stage in a war.
Page 1035
They are unlikely to use nuclear weapons first although fully
prepared to resort to them once they are used by an enemy.
Page 1036
However such a war is regarded by the Soviet leaders as highly
undesirable while they, in a period of almost endless cold war, can
seek to destroy capitalist society by nonviolent means. This theory of
"nibbling" the capitalist world to death is combined with a tactic
which would resist "capitalist imperialism" by encouraging "anti-
colonialism."
Stalin and Dulles saw the world largely in black-and-white terms:
who was not with them was obviously against them.
Page 1037
Stalin did not see the possibility of colonial areas becoming
non-Communist and non-colonial independent states and rebuffed the
local native groups. Khrushchev did the opposite.
Page 1038
This shift in the Soviet attitude toward neutralism was helped by
Dulles' refusal to accept the existence of neutralism. His rebuffs
tended to drive those areas which wanted to be neutral into the arms
of Russian because the new nations of the developing Buffer Fringe
valued their independence above all else. The Russian acceptance of
neutralism may be dated about 1954 while Dulles still felt strongly
adverse to neutralism four or five years later. This gave the Soviet
Union a chronological advantage to compensate for its many
disadvantages in the basic struggle to win the favor of the neutrals.
THE COLD WAR IN EASTERN AND SOUTHERN ASIA, 1950-1957
Page 1039
By 1939, there was only one independent state in southeast Asia:
Siam. Thus all southeast Asia, except Thailand, was under the colonial
domination of five Western states in 1939.
French Indochina emerged from Japanese occupation as the three
states of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, each claiming independence.
Efforts by the European Powers to restore their prewar rule led to
violent clashes with the supporters of independence. These struggles
were brief and successful in Burma and Indonesia but were very
protracted in Indochina.
Page 1042
In all these areas, native nationalists were inclined to the
political Left, if for no other reason than the fact that the
difficulties of capital accumulation and investment to finance
economic improvements could be achieved only under state control. In
some cases, such Communism may have been ideological but inmost cases,
it involved little more than the desire to play off the Soviet Union
and China against the Western imperialist Powers.
Page 1042
A communist revolt in the Philippines had already begun and was
joined by similar uprisings in Burma, Indonesia, and Malaya. Most of
these revolts took the form of agrarian agitations and armed raids by
Communist guerrilla jungle fighters. Since the operated on a hit-and-
run basis and had to live off the local peasantry, their exploitation
of peasant life eventually made them decreasingly welcome to this very
group for whom they pretended to be fighting.
In the Philippines, the rebels were smashed in 1953. In
Indonesia, Sukarno repressed the insurrection and executed its
leaders. In Malaya, the Communists were systematically hunted down and
destroyed by British troops. In Burma, they weren't eliminated until
1960.
The real problem was Indochina. There, the French Army was
uncompromising and Communist leadership was skillful. As a result, the
struggle became part of the Cold War. The Malay peninsula is dominated
by a series of mountain ranges with their intervening rivers running
southward from Chinese Yunnan. These rivers fan out into fertile
alluvial deltas which produce surplus foods for undemanding peoples.
Page 1043
Indochina brought considerable wealth to France. After the
Japanese withdrawal, the Paris government was reluctant to see this
wealth, chiefly from the tin mines, fall into native groups and by
1949, decided to use force to recover the area.
Opposed to the French effort was Ho Chi Minh, a member of the
French Communist Party. Ho had set up a coalition government under his
Viet Minh Party and proclaimed independence for Vietnam (chiefly
Tonkin and Annam) in 1945, while French troops, in a surprise coup,
seized Saigon in the south. Ho received no support from the Kremlin.
At first, Ho sought support from the United States but after the
establishment of Red China in 1949, he turned to that new Communist
state for help. Mao's government was the first state to give Vietnam
diplomatic recognition (January 1950) and at once began to send
military supplies and guidance. Since the U.S. was granting extensive
aid to France, the struggle in Vietnam became, through surrogates, a
struggle between the United States and China. In world opinion, this
made the U.S. the defender of European imperialism against anti-
colonial native nationalism.
During this turmoil, independent neutralist governments came into
existence in Laos and Cambodia. Both states accepted aid from whoever
would give it and both were ruled by an unstable balance of pro-
Communists, neutralists, and pro-Westerners, all with armed
supporters. On the whole, the neutralist group was largest and the
pro-Western was the smallest but could obtain support from America's
wealth. The decisive influence was that the Communists were prepared
to accept and support neutralism years before Dulles would condone it.
Page 1044
The readiness of Dulles and the French Army to force a showdown
in Vietnam was unacceptable to the British and many in France. Out of
this came a Soviet suggestion for a conference on Indochina in Geneva.
By early 1954, the Communist guerrillas were in control of most
of northern Indochina, were threatening Laos, and were plaguing
villages as far south as Saigon. About 200,000 French troops and
300,000 Vietnamese militia were tied in knots by about 335,000 Viet
Minh guerrillas. France was being bled to death with nothing to show
for it.
By the end of March 1953, the outer defences of the French strong
point at Dien Bien Phu were crumbling. The French chief of staff found
Dulles ready to risk all-out war with Red China by authorizing direct
American intervention in Indochina. As usual, Dulles thought that
wonders could be achieved by air strikes alone against the besiegers
of Dien Bien Phu and for a few day, at Dulles' prodding, the United
States tottered "on the brink of war." Dulles proposed "a united
action policy:" "If Britain would join the United States and France
would agree to stand firm, the three Western states could combine with
friendly asian nations to oppose communist forces.
Page 1045
President Eisenhower agreed but his calls to Churchill and Eden
found the British government opposed to the adventure because the
Sino-Soviet Treaty of 1950 bound Russia to come to the assistance of
China if it were attacked by the United States as Dulles contemplated.
During the 1954 Far Eastern Geneva Conference, two American
aircraft carriers, loaded with atomic weapons, were cruising the South
China Sea, awaiting orders from Washington to hurl their deadly bombs
at the Communist forces besieging the 15,000 exhausted troops trapped
at Dien Bien Phu. In Washington, Admiral Radford was vigorously
advocating such aggressive action on a generally reluctant government.
In Paris, public outrage was rising over Indochina where the French
had expended 19,000 lives and $8 billion without improving matters a
particle. The fall of Dien Bien Phy on May 7th led to the fall of the
French government. The new prime minister promised a cease-fire or his
own retirement within 30 days. He barely met the deadline.
The Indochinese settlement of July 20, 1954 was basically a
compromise, some of whose elements did not appear in the agreement
itself. A Communist North Vietnam state was recognized north of the
17th parallel and the rest was left in three states: Laos, Cambodia
and South Vietnam.
The new state system was brought within the Dulles network of
trip-wire pacts on September 8, 1954 when Britain, France, Australia,
New Zealand, Pakistan, Thailand, Philippines and the U.S. formed the
South-East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) and extended their
protection to Laos, Cambodia and South Vietnam.
The Geneva agreement was to neutralize the Indochina states but
was apparently not acceptable to the Dulles brothers and any possible
stability in the area was soon destroyed by their activities,
especially through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) seeking to
subvert the neutrality of Laos and South Vietnam by channeling
millions in American funds to Right-wing army officers, building up
large military forces, rigging elections, and backing reactionary
coups d'etat.
Page 1046
These techniques might have been justified in the eyes of the CIA
if they had been successful but, on the contrary, they alienated the
mass of the natives in the area, brought numerous recruits to the
Left, gave justification for Communist intervention from North
Vietnam, disgusted our allies in Britain, France, Burma, India and
elsewhere, and by 1962 had almost destroyed the American image and
position in the area.
In Laos, the chief political figure was Prince Phouma, leader of
the neutralist group, who tried to keep a balance between the
Communist Pathet Lao on his Left and the American-subsidized
politicians and militarists led by General Nosavan on his Right.
American aid was about $40 million a year of which about $36 million
went to the army. This was used, under American influence, as an anti-
neutralist rather than an anti-Leftist influence culminating in a
bungled army attack on two Pathet Lao battalions in 1959 and openly
rigged elections in which all the Assembly seats were won by Right-
wing candidates in 1960. In August 1960, an open revolt in behalf of
the neutralist Phouma game rise to a Right-wing revolution led by
General Nosavan. This drove the neutralists in the arms of the Pathet
Lao.
The SEATO Council refused to support the American position, the
Laotian army was reluctant to fight, and the American military mission
was soon involved in the confused fighting directly.
The American bungle in Laos was repeated, with variations,
elsewhere in southern and southeastern Asia. In South Vietnam,
American aid, largely military, amounted to about two thirds of the
country's budget, and by 1962, it had reached $2 billion. Such aid,
which provided little benefit for the people, corrupted the
government, weakened the swollen defense forces, and set up a chasm
between the rulers and people which drove the best of the latter
Leftward, in spite of the exploitative violence of the Communist
guerrillas. A plebiscite in 1955 was so rigged that the American-
supported candidate won over 98% of the vote. The election of 1960 was
similarly managed, except in Saigon, the capital, where many people
refused to vote. As might have been expected, denial of a fair ballot
led to efforts to assassinate the American-sponsored President, Diem,
and gave rise to widespread discontent which made it possible for the
Communist guerrillas to operate throughout the country. The American-
sponsored military response drove casualties to a high sustained
figure by 1962 and was uprooting peasantry throughout the country in
an effort to establish fortified villages which the British had
introduced with success in Malaya.
Page 1047
These errors of American policy, which were repeated in other
places, arose very largely from two factors:
1) American ignorance of local conditions which were passed over in
animosity against Russia and China;
2) American insistence on using military force to overcome local
neutralism which the mass of Asiatic people wanted.
The American militarization of both Thailand and South Vietnam
was used to increase pressure on Cambodia which was driven to seek
support for its independence from China and Russia.
North Vietnam had a deficiency of food while South Vietnam, like
all delta areas, is a zone of rice surplus and thus a shining target
for North Vietnamese aggression.
The collapse of the world price of rice at the end of the Korean
War left Burma with an unsellable surplus of almost two million tons.
Within the next three years, Burma signed barter agreements with Red
China and Soviet Europe by which Burma got rid of a third of its
surplus each year in return for Communist goods and technical
assistance. These returns were so poor in quality, high in price and
poorly shipped that Burma refused to renew the agreements in 1958.
SOUTHERN ASIA
Farther west, in southern Asia (correctly called the Middle East
from the Persian Gulf to Burma) American bungling also opened may
opportunities for Soviet penetration which the Soviets failed to
exploit.
Page 1048
India was determined to be neutral; Pakistan was willing to be an
ally of the United States.
Page 1049
The partition of India before independence in 1947, as in
Palestine and earlier in Ireland, received strong impetus from the
Round Table Group, and in all three cases, it led to horrors of
violence. In India's case, the partition was a butchery rather than a
surgical process. Imposed by the British, it cut off two areas in
northwestern and northeastern India to form a new Muslim state of
Pakistan (cutting right through the Sikhs in the process). The two new
nations began under two new leaders. In the post-partition confusion,
minorities on the wrong sides of the lines sought to flee, as
refugees, to India or Pakistan, while the Sikhs sought to establish a
new homeland by exterminating Muslims in East Punjab. In a few weeks,
almost 200,000 were killed and twelve million were forced to flee as
refugees.
The two sections of Pakistan were separated from each other by
1,100 miles of India territory, its boundaries irrational, its
economic foundations torn to shreds by the partition.
Page 1050
In 1958, martial law was established and General Khan became
president. Under military rule, a sweeping land-reform program
restricted owners to 500 irrigated or 1000 non-irrigated acres with
the surplus distributed to existing tenants or other peasants. Former
landlords received compensation in long-term bonds.
Page 1052
The American insistence on the non-committed nations adopting
anti-Soviet lines opened the way for the Soviet to pose as the friend
of such nations by supporting their neutralism.
Page 1053
At the end of World War II, about 80 percent of Iran's population
were peasants. Four fifths of the land was almost entirely useless,
being either mountainous or arid. Moreover, the peasants who tilled
the land were much oppressed by heavy rents to absentee landlords who
also controlled, as separate rights, essential access to water. Only
about a seventh of the land was owned by peasants who worked it.
Peasants retained little more than a fifth of what they produced.
The shah has shifted the basis of his support from the elite
landed group to this growing middle class.
Before 1914, the shah sought to raise funds for his personal use
by selling concessions and monopolies to foreign groups. Most of these
were exploitive of the Iranian peoples. Of these, the most important
was the concession for petroleum which came into possession of the new
Anglo-Persian Oil Company which came to be controlled, through secret
stock ownership, by the British government.
Page 1054
At the end of World War I, Iran was a battleground between
Russian and British armed forces. By 1920, the withdrawal of British
forces left the anti-Bolshevik Russian Cossack Brigade as the only
significant military force in the country. The chief Iranian officer
in that force, Reza Pahlavi, in the course of 1921-1925 gradually took
over control of the government and eventually deposed the incompetent
28-year-old Shah Ahmad.
Pahlavi's chief aim was to break down tribalism and localism. To
this end, he defeated the autonomous tribes, settled nomadic groups in
villages, shifted provincial boundaries to break up local loyalties,
created a national civil service and police force, established
national registration with identity cards for all, and used universal
conscription to mingle various groups in a national army.
All these projects needed money and the chief resource, oil, was
tied up completely in the concession held by the AIOC with the
inevitable result that it became the target of the Iranian nationalist
desire for traditional development funds. The older Iranian elite
would have been satisfied with a renegotiated deal but the newer urban
groups demanded the complete removal of foreign economic influence by
nationalization of the petroleum industry.
Page 1056
By 1950, the Shah put his prime minister in to force through the
supplemental agreement. Opposing groups introduced nationalization
bills. Gradually, the nationalization forces began to coalesce about a
strange figure, Mr. Muhammad Mossadegh, with a doctorate in Economics.
Politically, he was a moderate but his strong emotional appeal to
Iranian nationalism encouraged extreme reactions among his followers.
The company insisted that its status was based on a contractual
agreement which could not be modified without its consent. The British
government maintained the agreement was a matter of international
public law which it had a right to enforce. The Iranian government
declared it had the right to nationalize an Iranian corporation
operating under its law on its territory, subject only to adequate
compensation.
The nationalist arguments against the company were numerous:
1) It had promised to train Iranians for all positions possible but
had only used them in menial tasks, trained few natives and employed
many foreigners.
2) The company had reduced its payments to Iran, which were based on
profits, by reducing the amount of its profits by bookkeeping tricks.
It sold oil at very low prices to wholly-owned subsidiaries outside
Iran or to the British Navy, allowing the former to resell at world
prices so that AIOC made small profits, while the subsidiaries made
large profits not subject to the Iranian royalty obligations. Iran
believe that all profits should fall under the obligations. but as
late as 1950, AIOC admitted that the accounts of 59 such dummy
corporations were not included in AIOC accounts.
3) AIOC generally refused to pay Iranian taxes, especially income tax
but paid such taxes to Britain; at the same time, it calculated the
Iranian profit royalties after such taxes so that the higher British
taxes went, the less the Iranian payment became. Thus, Iran paid
income tax to Britain. In 1933, AIOC paid #305,000 in British taxation
and #274,000 in Iranian taxes. In 1948, the two figures were #28.3
million to Britain and #1.4 million to Iran.
Page 1057
4) The payment to Iran was also reduced by putting profits into
reserves or into company investments outside Iran, often in
subsidiaries, and calculating the Iranian share only on the profits
distributed as dividends. Thus in 1947, when profits were really #40.5
million, almost #15 million went to British income taxes, over #7
million to stockholders, and only #7 million to Iran. If the payment
to Iran had been calculated before taxes and reserves, it would have
received at least #6 million more that year.
5) AIOC's exemption from Iranian customs deprived Iran of about #6
million a year.
6) The company drew many persons to arid and uninhabited areas and
then provided very little of the costs of housing, education, or
health.
7) AIOC as a member of the international oil cartel reduced its oil
production and thus reduced Iran's royalties.
8) AIOC continued to calculate its payments to Iran in gold at #8.1
per ounce for years after the world gold price had risen to #13 an
ounce while the American Aramco in Saudi Arabia raised its gold price
on demand.
9) AIOC's monopoly prevented Iran developing other Iranian oil fields.
As a consequence of all these activities, the Iranian
nationalists of 1952 felt angered to think that Iran had given up 300
million tons of oil over fifty years and obtained about #800 million
in profits.
The Iranian opposition to nationalization was broken in 1951 when
the prime minister was assassinated. The nationalization bill was
passed and at the request of the Majlis, the shah appointed Mossadegh
prime minister to carry it out. This was done with considerable
turmoil which included strikes by AIOC workers against mistimed
British wage cuts, anti-British street riots and the arrival of
British gun-boats at the head of the Persian Gulf. Rather than give up
the enterprise or operate it for the Iranian government, AIOC began to
curtail operations and ship home its engineers. In May 1951, it
appealed to the International Court of Justice in spite of Iranian
protests that the case was a domestic one, not international. Only in
July, 1952, did the court's decision uphold Iran's contention by
refusing jurisdiction.
Page 1058
At first, the U.S. supported Iran's position fearing British
recalcitrance would push Iran toward Russia. However it soon became
apparent that the Soviet Union, while supporting Iran's position, was
not going to interfere. The American position then became increasingly
pro-British and anti-Mossadegh. This was intensified by pressure from
the international petroleum cartel comprising the seven greatest oil
companies in the world.
As soon as Britain lost its case in the International Court of
Justice, it put into effect a series of reprisals against Iran which
rapidly crippled the country. Iranian funds were blocked; its
purchases in British controlled markets were interrupted; its efforts
to sell oil abroad were frustrated by a combination of the British
Navy and the world oil cartel (which closed sales and distribution
facilities to Iranian oil). These cut off a substantial portion of the
Iranian government's revenues and forced a drastic curtailment of
government expenditures.
Page 1059
Mossadegh broke off diplomatic relations with the British,
deported various economic and cultural groups, and dismissed both the
Senate and the Iranian Supreme Court which were beginning to question
his actions.
By that time, almost irresistible forces were building up against
Mossadegh, since lack of Soviet interference gave the West full
freedom of action. The British, the AIOC, the world petroleum cartel,
the American government and the older Iranian elite led by the shah
combined to crush Mossadegh. The chief effort came from the CIA under
the personal direction of Allen Dulles, brother of the Secretary of
State. Dulles, a former director of the Schroeder Bank in New York. It
will be remembered that the Schroeder Bank in Cologne helped to
arrange Hitler's accession to power as chancellor in January 1933.
In the Near East, the mobs are easily roused and directed by
those who are willing to pay and Dulles had the unlimited secret funds
of the CIA. From these he gave $10 million to Colonel H. Norman
Schwartzkopf who was in charge of training the Imperial Iranian
Gendarmerie and this was judiciously applied in ways which changed the
mobs tune. The whole operation was directed personally by Dulles from
Switzerland.
In August Mossadegh held a plebiscite to approve his policies.
The official vote was about two million approvals against twelve
hundred disapprovals but his days were numbered. On August 13th, the
Shah precipitated the planned anti-Mossadegh coup by naming General
Zahedi as prime minister and sent a messenger dismissing Mossadegh.
The latter refused to yield and called his supporters into the streets
where they rioted against the Shah who fled with his family to Rome.
Two days later, anti-Mossadegh mobs, supported by the army, defeated
Mossadegh supporters. He was forced out of office and replaced by
General Sahedi. The shah returned from Italy on August 22nd.
Page 1060
The fall of Mossadegh ended the period of confusion. From 1953
on, the shah and the army, backed by the conservative elite,
controlled the country and the docile Majlis. Two weeks after the
shah's countercoup, the U.S. gave Iran an emergency grant of $45
million, increased its economic aid payment to $23 million and began
to pay $5 million a month in Mutual Security funds. In return, Iran
became a firm member of the Western bloc. The Communist Tudeh Party
was relentlessly pursued after 1953.
By 1960, the shah tried a program of agrarian reform which sought
to restrict each landlord's holdings to a single village, taking all
excess lands for payments spread over 10 years and granting the lands
to the peasants who worked them for payments over 15 years. The shah's
own estates were among the first to be distributed but by the end of
1962 over 5000 villages had been granted to their peasants.
In the meantime, the oil dispute was settled and the incomes to
Iran were considerably increased averaging about $250 million or more
a year.
--
John C. "The Engineer" Turmel, Founder, Abolitionist Party of Canada
915-2045 Carling Ave., Ottawa, K2A 1G5, Tel/Fax: 613-728-2196
LETS Abolish Interest Rates http://www.cyberclass.net/turmel
For TURMEL topic http://www.onelist.com/subscribe.cgi/lets
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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