Influence vs. Policy

...History, both Mao and Lin proclaim, is on the side of Communism...

...The influence of American political social and economic systems, and of the ideology of American democracy on the countries of the Indochinese peninsula, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia remains, alas, abysmally small...

...While we hesitate to admit it, there is unfortunately substantial basis for the Chinese perspective...

...and the very success of specific American military policies will ultimately eliminate the influence of Western liberalism and democracy...

...On the contrary, in the words of Marshal Lin Piao, it is precisely such involvement which will precipitate "people's wars against aggression and oppression," and stimulate "the revolutionary people of the world [to] sweep away everything that stands in the way of their advance...

...Suppression of the Boxers did nothing, of course, to preserve the Manchu dynasty...

...Not insignificantly, among all the Asian leaders Mao Tse-tung seems to have grasped its implications most completely...

...And the maintenance of the Nationalists as a second front against the Japanese did nothing to prevent their total submersion in the flood of Communist revolution...

...may have committed its share of blunders, it is nonetheless forcing the Soviet Union into an untenable position...

...It is the way men think that shapes their destiny...

...If one looks even superficially at the general goals of Asian nationalist movements, and the ideals which Asian leaders are holding out to their people, one is hard pressed to detect even the remotest semblance of basic Western values...

...The Russian attempt to push Chinese Communists into securing control of the masses within the framework of the Kuomintang led to the catastrophe of the Canton commune in 1927 and the ensuing annihilation of the very core of the party...

...And to suggest that American policy in Vietnam, now showing some clear signs of possible success, will readily be transmuted into a lasting American influence on the development of Southeast Asia, is to ignore grossly the ideological realities of the conflict...

...From the late 1890s, when it was our policy to subdue the Boxer Rebellion, to World War II, when it was our policy to maintain the Chinese Nationalists as a second front against the Japanese, the specific objectives of American policy have been fulfilled...

...and the specific demonstration that this model can be effectively applied in Asia is Communist China...

...And the Soviet Union, as wrought by Stalin, remained until recently the golden model of social and economic organization for China...

...In arguing that the United States is a "paper tiger," Mao is not underestimating either the capacity or willingness of America to fight for her policies in Asia...

...William G. Rosenberg, now at Harvard, will join Columbia University's Russian Institute in the fall...

...The origins of this decline are now traced to the period immediately following World War If, when the Soviet leadership adopted a policy of insistently urging their Asian brethren to prosecute struggles of national liberation, and promised the fullest and most comprehensive assistance...

...Instead it is the Soviet Union that remains the basic model for development...

...The failure of "national liberation" in the Philippines, and the drift of "national liberation movements' away from the Soviet orbit in Malaya, Singapore, Indonesia, Burma, Pakistan and elsewhere is offered as proof that Soviet influence in this area is now almost negligible...

...and to assume otherwise is to play the true role of the paper tiger...

...But American influence, in terms of the goals and values which will shape the future development of Asia, is singularly lacking...

...The crux of any nation's foreign policy is political power...

...Ironically, the crucial difference between effective influence and successful policy is best illustrated by the contrast between the overwhelming influence the Soviet Union has exerted on Chinese national development, and the patent failure of almost every specific aspect of Russian policy there...

...One nation "influences" another essentially through ideas...

...A long period of steady decline appears to be over, and American policy is allegedly beginning to show some signs of success...

...But when Soviet leaders did formulate specific policies toward China in the 1920s, 1930s and during World War II, these policies almost invariably led to disaster...

...As the history of Sino-Russian and American-Asian relations clearly shows, the difference between "policy" and "influence" is extremely important...

...The ideological perspectives of Ch'en Tu-hsiu, Li Ta-chao, Mao Tse-tung and the other early Chinese Communist leaders were largely molded by the dazzling success of the Communist Revolution in Russia at a time when Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin had no policy toward Asia whatsoever...

...And despite the depth of the current Sino-Soviet rift, it remains almost as strong today...

...The determined American military effort in South Vietnam seems to belie Mao's "paper tiger" thesis, and some Asian specialists now maintain that American bombing of North Vietnam has convinced "national liberation" groups in other Asian countries that it is they, not Peking, who will suffer from Chinese militancy...

...The success or failure of policy depends on the extent to which the country setting forth the policy can exert sufficient force to effect the realization of the policy's specific goals...

...but then preservation of the Empire was not a specific goal of American policy...

...In contrast to the Russian experience, American policies in Asia have more often than not been quite successful...

...The Western cause is clear: to contain Communism...

...They argue that while the U.S...

...Stalin's blunders caused the deaths of thousands of young Chinese Party members...

...The influence of one nation over another may be said to exist in a significant way only when the development of the second nation is materially altered or structured by the development of the first...

...And this occurred, of course, precisely as the revolution was about to succeed...

...As the Chinese adoption of its current position of hard-line Stalinism so crudely testifies, however, the influence of Soviet Russia on China remained profound despite all the calamitous failures of Russian policy...

...During World War 11 Stalin supported Chiang Kai-shek, and apparently lost all faith in the ability of the Communists themselves to effect a revolution...

...In the final analysis, they are saying, the international struggle is a war of ideas...

...On the other hand, the foreign policy relationship of one nation to another is basically a function of power...

...But current opinion holds that we are beginning to exert considerable influence in Southeast Asia, and will eventually prevail despite the continuing political turmoil...

...Certain prominent specialists in Russian and Chinese affairs have recently marked this progress in another way...

...The dangerous and critical fault of these analyses lies in their confusion of "influence" with "policy...

...Stalin's policy of urban insurrection, maintained in China by Li Li-san, Wang Ming and the socalled "returned Moscow students" in 1930 was coupled with the disastrous defeat of Peng Teh-huai and the Fifth Red Army at Changsha...

...it is a relationship meaningful only in terms of national development over a period of time...

...A similar argument is also made, but less strongly, about China...

...Soviet promises of defending Socialism anywhere on the globe appear to be largely wishful thinking...

...American officials are certainly most cautious in predicting success...

...The Vietcong, forced to suspend their effort to maintain conventional operations, are now faced with the dismal prospect of indefinite guerrilla struggle...

...Yet despite the obvious successes of specific American policies, the only areas of Asia where the United States has exercised a lasting influence are Japan and the Philippines, both of which were subjected to long periods of American occupation...

...Further, the abject failure of Soviet policy in Vietnam is being offered as specific evidence of the overall decline of Russian influence in Southeast Asia...

...But in any case it is now generally acknowledged that at the end of the war, it was not our policy to eliminate the Communist movement, or even to secure Mao's full subordination to Chang...

...At the same time, the recent repression of Communists in Indonesia is given as evidence that Chinese influence, like the Russian, may also be ebbing...

...In Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, North Vietnam, and even in Thailand and Burma, the future is seen to bear the promise not of individual liberty, free enterprise, or political democracy, but of industrialization, agrarian reform, social equality and the end of Western economic domination...

...but he is still revered as a great spiritual leader...

...The policies are specific: to stop the Vietcong, and if not to win the war, at least to prevent its being lost...

...Consequently, as one specialist on Communist affairs has put it, the Soviet Union has become a laughing stock in the coffee houses of Eastern Europe...

...and in the ultimate development of Asian history, it is the ideology of China, and of the pre-revisionist Soviet Union that will shape the future...

...The most powerful Socialist state in the world seems powerless to stop the wholesale bombing of another Socialist state, and has failed to compel the least mitigation of America's thrust...

...the measure of its international influence is ideological confluence...

...Even in Saigon, with its incredible variety of political movements, governments and leaders, there has not been a single significant national leader who has demonstrated even the remotest appreciation of the values for which Americans are fighting...

...To argue, therefore, that the obvious recent failures of Chinese and Soviet policies in Southeast Asia is indicative of the loss of Chinese or Russian influence in this part of the world is to misread dangerously the lesson apparent in the history of modern Sino-Soviet relations...