Levine, Isaac Don

views updated

Isaac Don Levine

Excerpt from "Our First Line of Defense"

Originally published in Plain Talk magazine, September 1949

"The White Paper is a denial of the existence of a will to save Asia. The White Paper is at best a testimonial to spinelessness and a confession of guilty conduct in the past.…"

T he vast Chinese empire existed in the Far East for centuries. By the early 1890s, however, a more modern, European type of world encroached upon ancient China. By 1911, a revolution had ended the empire, but only economic and political instability resulted. As a consequence, civil war broke out in the 1930s. The Kuomintang, or Nationalists, led by Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975) had ruled parts of China since the 1920s. The United States had recognized the Nationalist government since 1928. They were challenged by Mao Zedong (1893–1976) and his communist revolutionary forces. Mao, just like Soviet leader Joseph Stalin (1879–1953), strictly followed the philosophies of Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Vladimir I. Lenin (1870–1924) that had contributed to the birth of communism.

Mao's communist forces were largely peasants from China's agricultural areas. The civil war was interrupted in 1937 when the Japanese invaded China. The armies of both Chiang and Mao joined forces to stop Japanese aggression.

With the Japanese defeat and surrender in August 1945, the civil war resumed. In the United States, there was a large and influential group of Chinese Nationalist supporters, known as the China Lobby. They urged the United States to give strong backing to Chiang. Yet President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972; served 1945–53) was reluctant because of Chiang's growing reputation as a corrupt and oppressive leader. However, the fear of the spread of communism was beginning to sweep across America. Both everyday Americans and U.S. officials believed that any leader who openly labeled himself a communist, as Mao did, must be supported by Soviet leader Stalin. Under pressure, Truman sent a small amount of financial and military aid to the Nationalists.

President Truman sent General George C. Marshall (1880–1959) to China to attempt to work out a negotiated settlement between the Nationalists and communists. Marshall met with little success and by December 1946, he reported that a peaceful settlement was not likely. Soon the Nationalists were running out of money and military strength. During 1948, communist forces moved southward over China.

In January 1949, Chiang begged for military assistance from both the United States and the Soviet Union. Chiang knew that Stalin, perceiving Mao a threat to his own power, was not a strong supporter of Mao. Neither responded with aid, but the Soviets did implore Mao to halt his offensive and seek a settlement. By then, however, Mao's forces were unstoppable.

In August 1949, U.S. secretary of state Dean Acheson (1893–1971) wrote an analysis of the China situation. The report, called the White Paper, said that the fate of China lay with the Chinese themselves. The United States had done all it could and would do no more. Outraged, the China Lobby accused the U.S. State Department of overlooking the communist takeover of China.

In September 1949, journalist Isaac Don Levine published in the conservative U.S. magazine Plain Talk a widely read article, "Our First Line of Defense." Levine took strong issue with Acheson's perspective that the United States and other powers could not stop the takeover. He asserted that America's "first line of defense is wherever the communist power is." He accused the State Department of being misguided and of favoring Europe. His reference to "dollars and more dollars" was a direct reference to the Marshall Plan (see

Chapter 2). Nothing like the Marshall Plan was available in Asia. He accused the United States of having no "vision" for China. The excerpt that follows is from Levine's original article in Plain Talk.

Meanwhile, in September, communist forces pushed the Nationalists off Mainland China. They fled to the Chinese island of Formosa, renamed Taiwan. There, Chiang established what he called the Republic of China (ROC). On October 1, 1949, Mao proclaimed communist rule over Mainland China and called it the People's Republic of China (PRC).

Things to remember while reading "Our First Line of Defense":

Massive corruption among Chiang's closest loyalists and his Nationalist army had caused many Chinese to withdraw their support of Chiang.
In the United States, the "loss" of China was considered a major blow, a huge victory for communism worldwide.
Many in America held on to the so-called "China myth" that the United States had a centuries-old responsibility to protect China.

Excerpt from "Our First Line of Defense"

When Secretary of State [Dean] Acheson declared before the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees that America's "first line of defense is still in Europe," he exposed the chaos which underlies our foreign policy.…

With the deluge of the Second World War behind us, our first line of defense is wherever the Communist power is. That should be the keystone of any foreign policy.

It is arguable whether the people of the United States would go to war should there be a Soviet seizure of power, on the order of the Czechoslovak coup, in Finland or in Norway. But most sober observers would agree that a Communist coup in the Philippines, resulting in the establishment in Manila [the capital city of the Philippines] of a Soviet regime, would drive the American people into a war of national defense.…

First and foremost is the question: Why the White Paper now?… The position of nationalist China at the beginning of August, on the eve of the release of the White Paper, was grave but not hopeless.…

It is known that China's ambassador in Washington, Dr. Wellington Koo, had called at the White House weeks before the White Paper was issued and posed the following questions, in effect, before President [Harry] Truman:

"Why should the United States strike a finishing blow with its White Paper at the Nationalist forces while they are desperately struggling to hold the surging Communist armies? Was it the intent of the U.S. to speed the victory of the Communist elements? And was not the U.S. officially committed to a policy of containing the combating Soviet aggression and Communist expansion throughout the world?"

How and why President Truman came to yield to the Far Eastern "experts" [officials] in the State department will undoubtedly make fascinating reading at some future date. But the step taken by Secretary Acheson has climaxed our unsavory record of Teheran, Yalta, and Potsdam with a leaf from the book of rapacious despots. There was far more justification for [Soviet leader Joseph] Stalin's last-minute attack on Japan and even more extenuation for [Italian leader Benito] Mussolini's stab in the back of France than there was for our using at this hour the dagger of the White Paper on sick China.…

At best our present course of 'normalization' is calculated to achieve a stalemate, with Moscow in control of nearly half of Western Europe and most of Asia. Such a state of affairs condemns the world to chronic crisis, to economic and political fits, and puts a fatal burden upon America.

Instead of re-arming a crippled western Europe, let us disarm the Red Army . This can be achieved at a fraction of the cost of the new arms program by encouraging, through inducements to resettlement, the mass desertion of soldiers and able-bodied men from the Soviet zones which would undermine the Soviet edifice from within.

Let us boldly pick up the banner of Asian liberation and independence. With Japan extinct as a sea power and in our camp, we can wield a weapon against the Soviets in China which would make the Kremlin aggressors run to cover in no time. General [Douglas] MacArthur, moved from Tokyo to Formosa or Chungking, could turn the Japanese weapon to most effective use.

The White Paper is a denial of the existence of a will to save Asia. The White Paper is at best a testimonial to spinelessness and a confession of guilty conduct in the past.… It is one more alarming token of a colossus adrift , of an America guided abroad by men who would buy precarious peace piecemeal with dollars and more dollars rather than steer the world toward a stable peace with vision, with initiative, with courage, with honor.

What happened next …

On October 2, 1949, the Soviets recognized Mao's PRC government. The United States, under continuing pressure from the China Lobby, recognized Chiang's Taiwan government, the ROC, as the official Chinese government.

In December, Mao traveled to Moscow for Stalin's seventieth birthday celebration. Mao deeply respected Stalin, but Stalin always perceived Mao as a threat. Nevertheless, Mao successfully negotiated the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance. (The term Sino means Chinese.) Mao and Stalin signed the historic treaty on February 14, 1950. Stalin in effect recognized China as part of the communist world and promised China $300 million in loans. In the years to come, however, the Soviets provided little of the promised aid, and Mao's China would become an adversary of the Soviet Union. Mao adopted a strong anti-U.S. policy and seized U.S. diplomatic property. Historians widely viewed this agreement as a new and second front of the Cold War.

In January 1950, President Truman refused to move against the PRC. He, no doubt partly influenced by events in China and the growing clash in Korea with communist forces, announced the development project to build a hydrogen bomb. The Soviets had just successfully detonated an atomic bomb in 1949. Truman ordered Paul H. Nitze (1907–), who had replaced George F. Kennan (1904–) as head of the Policy Planning Staff in the State Department, to review U.S. defense policies worldwide. The National Security Council (NSC) document NSC-68 resulted (see the next excerpt in this chapter).

Opposition to the handling of China by the U.S. State Department continued to run high. U.S. senator Joseph R. McCarthy (1909–1957) of Wisconsin, the vicious and leading U.S. anticommunist critic, went after State Department officials who he presumed to be the "experts" mentioned in Levine's article. Ultimately, the United States maintained ties with Nationalist Chinese on Taiwan. The United States had no diplomatic ties with Mao's communist China until 1972 when U.S. president Richard Nixon (1913–1994; served 1969–74) managed to open relations.

Did you know …

Between 1945 and 1949, the United States gave Chiang $2 billion in military aid. Stalin had provided little aid or support to the Chinese communists.
Mao used captured Japanese military equipment left behind from Japan's unsuccessful invasion of China to help defeat Chiang's army.
The communist overrun of China was seen as another "domino" fall as communism was seemingly spreading over the world. Secretary of State Acheson had earlier warned of a domino effect, saying that if one or two countries fell to the communists, such as Greece and Turkey, then all of Western Europe, the Middle East, and even African nations could fall like dominos to the communists.

Consider the following …

In light of the Truman Doctrine, which promised that the United States would help any nation threatened by an attempted communist takeover, do you agree with the U.S. policy to let China "fall"? Why or why not?
Consider the Korean War (1950–53) and the Vietnam War (1954–75). Do you think Levine's statement, that "our first line of defense is wherever the Communist power is," contributed to U.S. intervention in those two areas?