AMERICAN DIPLOMACY, 1900-1950
By George F. Kennan
University of Chicago Press Chicago
1951. 145pp. US$2.75
This is a collection of six lectures and two magazine articles, which, though not giving the whole story of American diplomacy in the first fifty years of this century, is a remarkable commentary, full of the wisdom of experience and observation. Beginning with the US-Spanish War, the lectures analyze the Open Door and its consequences, the two World Wars, and the fundamental principles of modern diplomacy. The two articles are reprints from Foreign Affairs, one distinguishing the author as the maker of the containment policy and the other on America and the Russian Future. Based on his findings in the chosen episodes, the author is of opinion that American policy in the past fifty years has been all wrong. So he makes a plea for return to the balance of power which characterized nineteenth-century politics. It is clear that the balance of power policy as enunciated by Mr. Kennan is inextricably associated with his prescription for American policy in relation to Soviet Russia as contained in his two articles.
We do not wish to engage ourselves in sterile discussion as to whether the United States has really gone wrong in the last fifty years. Let us leave that question to the Americans themselves. For one thing, the United States has over the 1900-1950 period become the strongest world power, with the highest standard of living ever seen in history. Strength brings responsibility. It is, indeed, debatable whether responsibility grows with the sense of insecurity.
It is often said that the balance of power is a policy designed to keep peace. History also shows that it preserved peace for a hundred years until 1914. On the other hand, there were innumerable cases in which it failed to maintain peace. Not infrequently it led to war or even required war to keep it. Thus, like all human institutions, it has both merits and demerits and stands justified or condemned according to circumstances. An important fact to be noted is that the balance of power, rightly or wrongly, has been employed to a considerable degree to mould postwar politics. The North Atlantic Pact creats a strong alliance. As the Soviet Union on her part has concluded a series of bilateral pacts with her satellites such as the Soviet-Dulgarian Treaty of 1948, the Soviet Chinese Communist Treaty of 1950, etc., two rival blocs which together stretch most of the way around the world now confront each other, How far this differs from a balance of power arrangement is questionable. Apparently, the Japanese peace settlement along with the U.S. agreements with Australia and New Zealand and with the Philippines aims at the formation of a coalition to restore the equilibrium in the Far East. Likewise, the Rio Pact of 1947, the Brussels (Western Union) Alliance of 1948, and the European Defence Community of 1952 are all intended to serve similar purposes in the West. Thus, in spite of our efforts in other directions, the postwar world has gone a long way toward the building of a global balance of power. As a policy planner, Mr. Kennan has contributed a good deal toward this reorientation of the world situation. Because of this, his book has attracted worldwide attention and has deservedly been considered an exceedingly important one. The present reviewer reads, therefore, with understanding the sections of the book which deal with American policy in terms like the following:
"Today, standing at the end rather than the beginning of this half-century, some of us see certain fundamental elements on which we suspect that American security has rested. We can see that our security has been de pendent throughout much of our history on the position of Britain; that Canada, in particular, has been a useful and indispensable hostage to good relations between our country and the British Empire; and that Britain's position, in turn, has depended on the maintenance of a balance of power on the European Continent. Thus it was essential to us, as it was to Britain, that no single Continental land power should come to dominate the entire Eurasian land mass. Our interest has lain rather in the maintenance of some sort of stable balance among the powers of the interior, in order that none of them should effect the subjugation of the others, conquer the seafaring fringes of the land mass, become a great sea power as well as land power, shatter the position of England, and enter—as in these circumstances it certainly would—on an overseas expansion hostile to ourselves and supported by the immense resources of the interior of Europe and Asia. Seeing these things, we can understand we have had a stake in the prosperity and independence of the peripheral powers of Europe and Asia: those countries whose gazes were oriented outward, across the seas, rather than inward to the conquest of power on land." (pp. 4-5)
It would appear that Mr. Kennan has a better understanding of the West than the Far East. He admits this himself. His attempt to trace the origin of the Open Door, for example, is a departure from the usual study of the subject in that he closes his eyes to the plain fact that the idea of free trade was as old as the American independence movement. The idea was behind the campaigns against the British navigation acts and Napoleon's paper blockade. It lay at the basis of the most-favored-nation treatment which was the parent of the Open Door. In practice, the Open Door doctrine was an important American tradition, though the term itself did not appear until the end of the last century, John Hay's note of September 6, 1899 was an attempt to save that tradition and was undoubtedly in American interests. It is untrue for Mr. Kennan to say that Hay was simply misled by Rockhill and the latter, in turn, by Hippisley. Speaking before the New York Chamber of Commerce on November 19, 1901, Hay declared: "We believe that 'a fair field and no favor' is all we require, and with less than that we can not be satisfied."(New York Times, November 20, 1901). What he said can be taken at its face value.
Intimately connected with the note of September 6, 1899 is Hay's second circular of July 3, 1900 regarding the territorial integrity of China, which has been taken by historians as adding a new note to the thoughts put forward previously. Mr. Kennan takes exception to this even more vigorously. He regards both policy statements as a pronouncement of moral supremacy of the national interest, which the United States has never had the intention to enforce. As they were not intended to be implemented in any forcible manner, it was foolish for the U.S. to make them the basis of a foreign policy. Mr. Kennan observes that "neither of the phrases 'Open Door' or 'administrative and territorial integrity of China' had any clear applicability to actual situations in China in the sense that they could have been said to indicate feasible and practical alternatives to all the special positions and interests of the powers in that country." "It was not," he continues, "that the principles were wrong; it was not that they had in them no elements of soundness or that truth and justice were all on the other side the trouble with the Open Door doctrine and the integrity of China as political principles was simply that these terms were not clear and precise ones which could usefully be made the basis of a foreign policy. To a large extent they were cliches, dangerously inexact and confusing in the associations they provoked in people's minds." (pp. 44-45)
Mr. Kennan singles out particularly the case of Japan in support of his argument. In the interwar period, according to him, the United States frequently brought pressure to bear on Japan in the name of moral or legal principle with general reluctance to suggest practical alternatives for the Japanese to take. Certainly, they were offended. The author charges that U.S. relation to the people of the Far East has been colored by a certain sentimentality toward the Chinese. As a guide for the future, he warns Americans against making themselves "slaves of the concepts of international law and morality". (pp.53-54)
In this connection, it is interesting to note that postwar studies in international law and relations have shown a marked tendency toward a new "realism." Wilsonian thinking that characterized the era following World War I has given way to a general emphasis upon nineteenth-century power politics. Those who follow the trend with interest can readily see that the study of power is the order of the day. To these new "realists", the ideas of the League of Nations or the United Nations are merely high-sounding legal and moral principles which are hardly ever applicable to the political reality of today. As a career diplomat with long actual experience, Mr. Kennan should naturally fall into this category and look at things from the realistic point of view. He writes:
"I see the most serious fault of our past policy formulation to lie in something that I might call the legalistic-moralistic approach to international problems. This approach runs like a red skein through our foreign policy of the past fifty years. It has in it something of the old emphasis on arbitration treaties, something of the Hague Conferences and schemes for universal disarmament, something of the more ambitious American concepts of the role of international law, something of the League of Nations and the United Nations, something of the Kellogg Pact, something of the idea of a universal "Article 51" pact, something of the belief in World Law and World Government. But it is none of these, entirely." (p. 95)
We have reason to doubt whether international diplomacy is simply a struggle for power, as the self-styled "realists" would have us believe. Of course, national interests should always be the criterion of a foreign policy. But this gives rise to another question whether legal and moral principles by themselves are not in accord wit h national interests. It would appear that the Open Door Policy has not stood in the way of American interests any more than the Monroe Doctrine. It seems equally clear that the United Nations Charter is in no way against American interests, either.
By pushing this line of thought a little further, one can also ask the question whether the balance of power policy as practised in the nineteenth century and advocated now by the author will be in American interests in the long run. At any rate, there are two factors which seem to justify an answer in the negative. First, the age has changed. If the old-fashioned diplomacy was not able to maintain peace in 1914, it would be less able to do so today. The mere possibility that air and atomic power alone might upset an equilibrium would dwarf any other threat to peace in history. Secondly, as a result of World War II, the distribution of power in Europe and Asia has changed profoundly. The question is no longer a simple one of restoring the upset balance of power in the classic sense of the term. Mr. Kennan's project is based upon the containment policy as set forth in one of his articles in the book under review. It is clear that his is a program of balance of power between the Communist bloc and the free nations, a program which presupposes and condones the existence of the new Soviet Empire. This is at once sinful and impossible. It is sinful, because it connives at the misfortune of the people behind the Iron Curtain. It is impossible, because Communism by its very nature can not be contained, as is evidenced by the Korean War, the Indo-Chinese crisis, and the disturbances in Burma, Malaya, Indonesia and the Philippines.
That the containment policy is unsuited to the existing world situation is demonstrated by the G. O. P. victory in the U. S. presidential election. We are confident that President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower meant what he said when he made known his policy of peaceful liberation during the campaign. A policy of peaceful liberation does not apply to a balance of power arrangement based on the containment doctrine. On the contrary, they conflict with each other. Secretary of State-designate John Foster Dulles is known as a staunch defender of the United Nations. By contrast, he observes:
"Fundamentally, world peace depends upon world law, and world law depends upon a consensus of world opinion as to what is right and what is just. If there is wide disagreement about what is right and just, there will always be risk of war. Human nature is such that men have always believed—and I trust always will believe—as President Wilson put it in his war message to Congress, 'The right is more precious than peace.'" (John Foster Dulles, War or Peace, 1950, p. 187)
Probably the above passage would be the tolling of the death knell for the theory and practice of American diplomacy as enunciated in the book under review. Probably this all important book for which the author won the Freedom House - Willkie Memorial Building Award would he only of academic interest from now. With Mr. Dulles in the State Department, many basic concepts and characteristic methods that have dominated U.S. foreign policy under the Democratic administration will be abandoned. First and foremost, the Yalta dictate must go, in spite of Mr. Kennan's distortion of facts in defense of it. -- Hsiao Tso-liang
NATIONALISM AND COMMUNISM IN EAST ASIA
By W. MacMahon Ball, Published by Melbourne University Press under the Auspices of The Institute of Pacific Relations, 1952 v + 205 pp. and index, 25/-
A book by one of the foremost authorities on Far Eastern politics of the Common wealth of Australia, Prof W. MacMahon Ball of Melbourne University, deserves the serious attention of all students of world politics. Let us first of all take a look at the practical experience in politics that the professor brings to bear on the subject he treats of in the book under review. Prof. Ball is Head of the Department of Political Science at the University of Melbourne. From 1940 to 1944, he was a member of the Allied Political Warfare Committee in the Southwest Pacific. In 1945, he was adviser to the Australian Delegation to the San Francisco Conference. Later in the same year, he was Political Representative of Australia in Indonesia and Malaya. In the following two years he was the Representative of the United Kingdom, India, Australia and New Zealand on the Allied Council for Japan. In 1948, he acted as Leader of the Australian Goodwill Mission to some ten countries in the Far East. From this sketch one will realize that Prof. Ball, in addition to his distinguished academic standing, is also an eminent man of affairs.
Prof. Ball disclaims any "expert knowledge or any single East Asian country nor of the region as a whole" but emphasizes the importance of looking at the region "as a whole". He points to the three contemporary political forces in East Asia, i.e., nationalism, social revolution and Asia for Asians and makes it the business of this book "to discuss the problems they create for the West". (p. v) Geographically, the book encompasses Japan, China, Korea, Indo-China, the Philippines, Thailand, Burma, Malaya, Indonesia and India. Pakistan is touched upon incidentally, but not given a chapter by herself, as is the case with each of the other countries mentioned. Ceylon is listed by name in the Foreword, but not otherwise discussed. Prof. Ball admits that "any delimitation of east Asia is arbitrary" and doubts "whether it is possible, on political grounds, to justify the omission of Pakistan and Ceylop." While we too realize "yet a line must be drawn somewhere on the border of the Indian Ocean and the Middle East," we must seek for the explanation on other than political grounds. Not knowing any economic ground for so delimiting East Asia and having observed the leniency of Prof. Ball in listing India within East Asia, the reviewer humbly suggests the religious ground of Islam as sufficient reason for excluding Pakistan and geographical reason of not being a part of the Indian subcontinent as sufficient reason for excluding Ceylon. Whether or not these alleged reasons have any relevancy to Prof. Ball's reason for omitting them, the reviewer wouldn't dare say.
Although he emphasizes that the original attack by Communist North Korea was "a clear act of aggression" (p. 56), Prof. Ball looks askance at some of the actions taken by America, especially her attitude towards Taiwan. Prof. Ball describes as unfortunate the Resolution of the General Assembly of the U. N. declaring Communist China as an aggressor in Korea. He point to the fact that, outside of the Soviet bloc, the Resolution was opposed by India and Burma and concluded "when U. N. actions provoke anxiety and discord in the West, and nearly general opposition in the East, it becomes difficult to distinguish it from a sectional alliance, led by the United States". (p. 60) Elsewhere, he says, "It is merely a question whether it is legally accurate to describe t it as a United Nations action". (p. 57) When three out of five member-states of the region—Thailand, the Philippines and Free China—voted in support of the Resolution and only two-India and Burma-voted against it, for Prof. Ball to describe the Resolution as provoking "general opposition in the East" will furnish a gauge to the accuracy with which he uses the English language. For a scientific student of international politics, as a Head of the Department of Political Science should be, to designate the U. N. as "a sectional alliance, led by the United States" or to question the legal accuracy of describing a resolution of the General Assembly duly adopted in accordance with the U. N. Charter and its own Rules of Procedure "as a United Nations action" falls rather short of the purity of the scientific method.
Prof. Ball is of the opinion that the Peace Treaty with Japan needs to be a part of a wider settlement for East Asia, with Russia and the Chinese Communist regime as parties. Russia and the Chinese Communist regime fear a rearmed Japan as much as Australia and other countries in Southeast Asia, and on the basis of the common fears, an agreement might be reached to neutralize Japan. In spite of the two years that Prof. Ball spent on the Allied Council for Japan, he seems to be little aware of the extent to which Japan has been disarmed. The reviewer suspects that Prof. Ball's experience in 1945 and 1947 in Tokyo might have been a frustrating one. His analysis of the psycho logy of the Japanese leaders seems to be an illusory one. He writes: "Japan's leaders might feel it expedient to switch their alliance." To this end, "they would need to assess not only the penalties but the possible gains, of the alternative alliances ..... If the Soviet Union were to be victorious she might be granted a free hand in the South Seas. It might be that her leaders would consider the winning and holding of territory in the South Seas the easier and more attractive prospect". (p. 30) Prof. Ball is realist enough to open such gainful prospects to Japanese leaders, but it is doubtful whether Messrs. Yoshida, Ogata and Shigemitzu have lately seriously reflected Oil such an alternative.
On the Anzus Pact, Prof. Ball remarks: "I cannot believe that the Defense Pact between the United States, Australia and New Zealand has any practical relevance, either for Australia or for any other country in the Western Pacific that might be included in it. In essence, this Pact is a commendable, if not convincing, effort to comfort the fearful and credulous". (pp. 30-31) He reasons that Australia is unlikely to be threatened except in a general war, and the forces which America could then spare for the protection of Australia would be determined by the needs of over-all strategy. He further points out that whereas the North Atlantic Pact provided in Article 5 for "the use of armed force", the Anzus Pact provided, In Article 4 only for action by the signatories "to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes". The impression that Prof. Ball gives is that the United States almost went on its knees in soliciting Australian agreement to such a pact. Such flights of literary imagination does little to enhance the prestige of the study of politics as a science.
It is unlikely, Prof. Ball thinks, that India will commit herself to a firm alignment with the Western Powers. "It is one thing", he remarked, "for India's Government to oppose Communism in India; it is another to ally herself with the West against Asian movements which, though led by Communists, derive much strength from their appeal to notional and racial sentiments". (p.195)
Prof. Ball devotes 4 full pages (pp.45-48) to a discussion of land reform on the Chinese mainland, 11 lines to a discussion of the theoretical basis of land reform in Korea (pp.53-54), slightly more than a page to a very constructive criticism of land reform in India (pp.184-185) but not a word of land reform in Taiwan.
On the nature of propaganda, Prof. Ball suggests: "In propaganda, .....it is fundamental to recognize that the West must work with and through, not against the three powerful indigenous movements of East Asia. If the Western democracies appear to oppose the determination to win and to keep national independence, to achieve a new social order, and to hold Asia for the Asians, all their programs—military, economic, and psychological—are marked for failure." (p. 204)
Prof. Ball ascribes the tendency of the United States to take unilateral action in Pacific affairs to its passionate conviction that Communism in any form is bad and must be stopped. From Prof. Ball's critical point of view, only "the suppression of political and civil freedoms, the ruthless liquidation of class enemies and deviationists'" constitute "features of Communist theory and practice that repel so many Westerners". (p.10) I don't know whether or not Prof. Ball considers himself one of "so many Westerners", but I do know that in Communist practice, he will be condemned at least as one of the "deviationists" who will be the object of Communist "ruthless liquidation". Prof. Ball finds no evidence to support the view that the insurrection in Malaya is genuinely nationalist in nature and he suggests that the movement is aided by International Communism because of the strategic importance of Malaya. What he can sec clearly in Malaya may not appear clearly to him elsewhere in East Asia. The rationale of the Cominform is ascribed by Prof. Ball to be the strategic importance of Malaya rather than to the Communist theory of World Revolution or Soviet Imperialism. Such refinement is worthy of the finest academic delicacy.
Wherever Prof. Ball's deviationism may have carried him en route, he did arrive at the right destination in the final paragraph of his study where he asserted that "the best hope for their future is that they will resist domination by the Soviet Union with the same firm resolve that they have shown in winning freedom from the West." (p.205) The professor did tarry on the way and sometimes the reviewer suspects that he may have double - tracked on himself part of the way and fellow-travelled a bit in his thought. Should this allegation be founded on facts, the reviewer hopes that the following items will help to explain the incongruous phenomena of Prof. W. MacMahon BalI deviating from Communist theory and practice while expressing a number of opinions which would inevitably give aid and comfort to the Kremlin.
First, let us remember that Prof. Ball is teaching at an Australian University. In Australia, the trade unionists have been giving the cues on the political stage for some years. And trade unionists of the Commonwealth in general have not yet come to a policy regarding socialism and Communism which their members may unanimously support. Secondly, Prof. Ball had been active in the Australian Council of the Institute of Pacific Affairs and the book under review is published under the auspices of that Institute. Broadly speaking, Prof. Ball sees eye to eye on many basic issues of this day with Messrs. Owen Lattimore, John Carter Vincent, Edward Carter, O. Edmund Clubb and John Stewart Service. Like other luminaries of the American Council of the Institute of Pacific Affairs, Prof. Ball has not come to regard International Communism as evil, only certain aspects of Communist practice are objectionable. Thirdly, Prof. Ball admittedly knows the Commonwealth better than other parts of East Asia and that he does not show the same cool detachment to the threat of Communist fifth columnist activities with reference to Malaya as he does to other regions of East Asia. Fourthly, Prof. Ball has such an emotional antipathy towards Free China that he refuses to review the evidence that Taiwan now presents to the world. Such facts as have been observed in Taiwan by Senator John Armstrong of Australia can not be fairly appraised by Prof. Ball.
This review is made extraordinarily long so as to emphasize again the fact that we must not hide our virtues under a bushel. As soon as the means are available, it is our bounden duty to let interested students of the world know what we have been doing in the way of rounding up the Communists and their fellow travellers and of improving the economic and social lot of the people. Prof. Ball may have shown through the book under review some weak spots in his omniscience, but we in Free China have been much worse amiss in failing to blow our own trumpet -- Y. Chao
Manliness
The exiled intelligentsia of East Chin were wont to have all outing to Hsin Ting and to have a picnic there, whenever the weather was fine. Chou Po-jen in the midst of them once exclaimed: "The scenery is just as good here, but how different the mountains and the rivers are!" Whereupon those present looked at one another listlessly and soon fell to sniffling. Wang Tao, the prime minister, immediately changed color and indignantly remarked, "All we should do now is to try our level best to assist our emperor to recover our lost territory. Why whimpering like a batch of helpless captives?"
—From The Shih Sho Hsin Yu