The Care and Feeding of Revolutions

...To this day, we tend to be more indulgent toward the French than to any other nation because, after almost two centuries, the memory of Lafayette and the French fleet at Yorktown still strongly colors our attitude and policies...

...No one hereafter can maintain that the decision was taken by stealth and conspiracy in some obscure corner of the State Department...

...They can be extremely useful to a new ruler, particularly if he feels the need of drastic social and economic reform but is not too clear about what he wants or how to go about getting it...

...The occasions on which he worked with Communists will be recorded, but equal attention will be given to the occasions on which he has differed with them, and why...

...and Revolution, an "occasional paper" published by the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, which is sponsored by the Fund for the Republic...

...As he sees it, the Twentieth Century "is really in revolution for Americanism" and what we need to recognize is that there may be "more than one revolutionary path" to this goal...

...Instead of reserving their benign smiles until they were certain how the revolution would end up, they brought them promptly into play and did all they could to see to it that the revolution did not end up by swelling the Soviet bloc...

...As I read these words, I was vividly reminded of an incident which took place three years ago in Washington, soon after the Iraqi revolution, led by General Karim Kassim, in which King Faisal and a number of his high officials were brutally slain...

...Above all, our agency will make due allowances for the inexperience in government of most revolutionary and nationalist leaders...

...It is important that we learn better how to understand and deal with revolutions and the people who lead them...

...But it is history that bestows the title of "revolution," not anybody's orthodoxy, new or old, and the events which have acquired this title have usually been riotous or subversive of established institutions...

...The Communists, who once dominated the headlines from Baghdad as they have more recently the headlines from Havana, faded out...

...if by chance they wander into the Communist Party, they tend to be acutely uncomfortable and to get out...

...Personal eccentricities unbecoming to a good Communist Party member abound in revolutionary leaders...

...In most cases, these revolutions, be they violent or relatively bloodless, have been and will continue to be led by people new to us—usually woefully unused to responsibility, often radical, frequently eccentric, and sometimes unpredictable...

...This very inexperience offers an opportunity to the Communists...

...He inherits also the economic problems of the regime he has supplanted —problems which, except in subcontinents like the Soviet Union, cannot be solved within his own borders, but depend upon complex political, commercial, and economic relations with the outside world...

...In such a situation, it is well not to let the Communists become indispensable to him, as they may have by now to Castro...

...These three revolutions are coming very fast...

...This, indeed, was precisely what the British did—and with results which, in spite of the recent squabble over Kuwait, have been generally satisfactory...

...Third, we will not be too alarmed that some revolutionary leaders have, at an early stage in their careers, been Communist Party members—it may actually have contributed to their better understanding of the ways in which Communist objectives differ from theirs...

...The application of this standard leads him to some curious results—the description of the postwar accomplishments we fostered in West Germany as "revolutionary" and of the CIA-engineered coup in Guatemala as "a revolution designed on our own pattern...

...Nationalist leaders are generally proud and prickly people...

...Then a man who seized power could be reasonably confident that he could exercise it effectively...

...As the gathering broke up, one of those "present whispered to me: "Wait and see...

...It would not judge them by the standards expected of veteran statesmen in longestablished regimes...

...We cannot be expected to smile benignly on revolutions that end up by swelling the ranks of our known enemies...

...Not a single leader of the new African nations, even the most radical, is a Communist...

...I am unable to reconcile his conclusion with the history of the past decade and a half...

...Our new agency would make its assessments thoroughly but promptly...

...To his great credit, Senator Stephen Young, Ohio Democrat, arose to say that, while he would never have voted for Jagan, he sees more hope in working with him than in working against him...

...And, because American politics, on any world-wide scale, leans somewhat to the right, it would be advisable to take appropriate steps to ensure that the agency leans politically somewhat to the left—there are plenty of checks and balances elsewhere to counter this bias, and it has the advantage that the distance between the new bureau and most of the people it would deal with would thereby be reduced...

...Since, in our highly bureaucratic form of government, the first step in doing something is to establish an office somewhere in the hierarchy for the purpose, there might well be one called "The Office for the Study and Care of Revolutionary Leaders" (OSCRL...

...It would be worth serious study to determine why the Communists, always far better organized than other elements in nationalist movements, so consistently failed to seize leadership of these forces...

...he is almost unique in his candor but not in his inexperience...

...Some things revolutionary leaders do may seem almost insane to us, but may make sense in view of their own political problems and necessities...

...Both before and after the recent and expected victory of Cheddi Jagan in British Guiana, our State Department has let it be known to interested journalists that, like the British Colonial Office, we are prepared to take the chance of being friendly and helpful to him...

...Those who are present may not always have the good fortune to be effective...

...Not only did they receive these in copious quantity, but they were also sent a full and fancy dress uniform, complete with medals...

...as for the late Patrice Lumumba, he was obviously incapable even of disciplining himself...

...As we have recently been reminded by Senator Thomas J. Dodd, Connecticut Democrat, Jagan has often described himself as a Marxist and his wife was undoubtedly a member of the Young Communist League...

...I can well remember the incident which first suggested to me that Tito was not precisely an orthodox Communist...

...This is simply not true...

...With all his eccentricities, the Iraqi dictator provided the British with a useful counterweight against President Nasser, who after the Suez affair seemed in danger of getting too big for his breeches...

...Selwyn Lloyd, then Britain's foreign secretary, spoke to a small gathering about these events...

...They may not have produced the leaders, but they have many able helpers to offer...

...This is a far greater problem for them than in simpler times, when governments were small and both their problems and their range of activities were limited...

...First, if we recognize that the Communists have always been there, we won't be looking with suspicion to find out who let them in...

...But the Russians, too, have had their disappointments...

...The French, as always, have a proverb which reflects centuries of experience: "The absent are always in the wrong...

...Instead of complaining that Moscow was moving in, they moved in themselves...

...President Nasser has candidly confessed how unprepared he was to govern Egypt when he took power...

...In part, it may have been because Comintern policy at times forced them to swim against the tide—as, during World War II, the Communists in India felt compelled to support the British as allies of the Soviet Union...

...He warns against the "new orthodoxy" that bestows "the glorious title of 'revolution' on every riotous or subversive act in Africa or Latin America...

...Professor Kenneth E. Boulding of the University of Michigan comes out strongly in favor of what he defines as the Fomentarian Revolution...

...Before we can do this, however, we shall have to become—if only because of our national fixation on the subject— more rational about the role of Communists in today's revolutions...

...This is an attractive pattern, but the trouble is that only Puerto Rico really fits it...

...The imagination boggles, for example, at anyone trying to "discipline" Castro...

...It has four essential characteristics— the achievement of a political consensus in the society concerned, a stress on education and the development of human resources, the skill to strike clever bargains with foreign capitalists, and the ability to effect a sufficient cultural change (including the acceptance of birth control) that the gains of development can be reasonably permanent...

...To be fair, he believes that our standards are somewhat rigid and outdated...

...Now the new man inherits a bureaucracy which, though it may seem small to us, seems unwieldy to him...

...The agency would lean over backwards to achieve tolerance and understanding of the occasionally odd and even irrational behavior of new revolutionary leaders...

...Shannon, closest to the centers of power in Washington, is the most candid, writing: "It would be in our selfish national interest if there were no more revolutions anywhere for a good long time...

...It is important to recognize this because it will free us from several dangerous delusions...

...Outside China, the only Asian Communist who, at least for a time, was the George Washington of his country was Ho-Chi-Minh in Indo-China...

...In the days of Stalin, such a development would have been followed by the liquidation of all past and present occupants of the Middle East desk in the Soviet Foreign Office as spies of Cairo...

...DAVID C. WILLIAMS specializes in foreign affairs and has written for a number of publications in this country and abroad...

...Others may be really absurd, but may reflect an immaturity which they are capable of outgrowing...

...We cannot say for certain, because they did not...

...To date, they are mostly sponsored by Communists...

...We tend both to be unduly aggrieved that they are there and grossly to exaggerate their importance...

...I believe there is a moral in this— that we Americans might benefit if we adopted a less prudent (and less prudish) attitude toward revolutions and the men who lead them...

...Communists are normally present in nationalist movements from the beginning...

...In larger part, I believe, it resulted from the rigidly disciplined character of the Communist movement, which produced skilled and dedicated technicians but not the charismatic, freewheeling leaders, sensitive to every nuance of their people's mood, which revolutions seem to require...

...3) revolution against economic feudalism...

...2) revolution against political feudalism...

...Therefore, they require an extraordinary effort on the part of all Americans—and particularly the American government—to understand and deal with them...

...Some that we have helped may disappoint us...

...Americans—and above all Senators and Congressmen—will have to accept the fact that there are risks in extending a hopeful welcome to revolutions, rather than recoiling from them in fear...

...Professor Harvey Wheeler of Washington and Lee University maintains that our entire history makes it impossible for us to have any sympathy for revolutions other than our own middle-class revolution for the establishment of republican liberal democracy...

...It was evident that he was deeply moved by the tragic fate that had overtaken these men, some of them personal friends and all staunch supporters of the British interest in the Middle East...

...A useful starting point in the discussion of this subject is The U.S...

...That was a long while ago, and is not very helpful in coping with today's world-wide ferment...

...It is essential that our Senators and Congressmen show equal sophistication, and not seek out and hound from office officials whose policies, representing a sober assessment of the prospects at the time, have not yielded the expected results...

...But we will not have opportunities open to us if we stand timidly aside from the kind of revolutionary world in which, willynilly, we have to live...

...Almost always, there are Communists somewhere in the revolutionary movement...

...Not a single Latin American revolutionary leader has taken power as a Communist—not even Castro at the time he rode in triumph into Havana, however much he may have moved their way since...

...It is good, I think, that Senators Dodd and Young have spoken, so that the American people know that their government is about to take a calculated risk and why...

...If, after being wined and dined, he has made the sort of afterdinner speech calculated to please his hosts, that will be noted—but so also will be what he said after he returned home...

...A related danger is that of exaggerating the importance of the Communists...

...This, he concedes, is an unattainable ideal, and other contributors carefully define the kind of revolutions which the United States can be expected to favor...

...Here Justice Douglas, I believe, goes astray when he writes: "The three revolutions that the peoples of the world demand are (1) revolution against colonialism...

...We have a habit of saying that Communists "infiltrate" nationalist movements, as if they were visitors from outer space...

...It is fair to say that, with the notable exception of Justice Douglas, the attitude of the contributors towards revolution is reminiscent of the attitude of Puritans toward sex— they accept it reluctantly and only in its most respectable forms, if at all...

...It should be staffed by historians, sociologists, and psychologists as well as practical politicians...

...The contributors to this symposium range from Justice William O. Douglas to William V. Shannon, chief of the Washington bureau of the New York Post, and include four university professors...

...and China stand anxiously and maliciously ready to move in and exploit revolutions...

...The British oil properties in Iraq were not nationalized...

...Typical of the caution which most of the contributors counsel about revolution is Rossiter's advice: "We should exercise prudence . . . because we are faced with the harsh fact that the U.S.S.R...

...Second, we will accept it as normal that many revolutionary or nationalist leaders have at one time or another associated with the Communists in actions directed against the colonial power or the local ruling class...

...We would indeed be fortunate if all the new leaders who appear on the world stage were like Luis Munoz Marin, but this is too much to hope...

...Premier Khrushchev has complained about the gross ingratitude of President Nasser who, in spite of all the help the Soviet Union has given him, imprisons and even executes Egyptian Communists...

...These are not robots but human beings with human failings—but extraordinary human beings, or they would not have risen to the top in the supremely testing ordeal of revolution...

...Timely action, as we should know from our own experience, can yield timeless dividends...

...In spite of what he says, the British government is going to turn right around and support General Karim Kassim...

...These are situations where the risks of inaction, yielding to the Communists a clear field, are usually greater than the risks of timely action...

...Egoism alone—almost a standard trait in revolutionary leaders—was out of place in a movement which reserved a monopoly of this quality for the "genial father of mankind," Joseph Stalin...

...Many Communists begin by being nationalists, and some continue to be as much nationalist as Communist...

...Our new office would be charged with knowing whether the man under study has visited Moscow, but will not attach undue importance to this fact...

...Where there is any prospect of a non-Communist future for the new regime—and there usually is—it would recommend to our government that it be quick and generous with sympathy and with help of the most practical kind...

...Madame Tussaud's, Wanting to place a figure of the Yugoslav dictator in their London wax museum, wrote him for photographs...

...It is a measure of Khrushchev's greater sophistication about the world and its uncertainties that no such purge has taken place...

...What would have happened if the British had taken Rossiter's counsel...

...It is not enough that we keep repeating that ouV own nation was born in revolution...

...Increasingly, we must take the chance of being helpfully present in the early and formative period of revolutionary regimes...

...Professor Clinton Rossiter of Cornell University sets up as his model of a "perfect revolution" one which achieves "national independence, political viability, social and economic development...

...It is pleasant to report that, though my proposed agency does not yet exist, our government seems to be about to embark upon the kind of policy I hoped it would advocate...