School of War - Ep 56: Ronald H. Spector and the Chaos of Postwar Asia

Episode Date: January 10, 2023

Ronald H. Spector, Professor Emeritus of History at George Washington University and author of A Continent Erupts: Decolonization, Civil War, and Massacre in Postwar Asia, 1945-1955, joins the show to discuss the fall of Japan, the spread of Communism, and the role of the United States in postwar Asia. ▪️ Times  • 01:34 Introduction • 05:57 No clear plan • 08:30 The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere • 10:51 The Indian National Army  • 12:12 Marines in North China  • 15:49 Levels of violence • 17:24 Was 1949 preventable? • 22:32 U.S. attitudes towards Korea  • 26:25 Kim Il-sung • 28:17 Ho Chi Minh goes to Moscow • 31:08 Stopping the spread of communism  • 33:03 Reconstruction  • 35:09 Post 1955

In August 1945, the American people were ready to be done with war, and in the Pacific, peace was here at last, except it wasn't. In fact, Asia and the Pacific were about to witness continuing violence on a scale that would in many places compete with the suffering of the war, in China itself, on the Korean Peninsula, throughout Southeast Asia, and beyond. The spread of communist movements, intertangled with nationalist sentiments and the collapse of European imperialism was a recipe for disorder and unpredictability through which the American Republic, unaccustomed to hegemonic responsibilities, would have to navigate. Today, let's talk about quote unquote post-war Asia. It is a prescription for war, this Iraqi invasion of Hawaii.

December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infinite. The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a We continue to face a grave situation in Iran. The people are Nazi. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean.

Thanks for joining School of War. I'm joined today by Ronald Specter. He is Professor Emeritus in the Department of History at George Washington University, the author of many books. Most recently, A Continent Erupts, Decolonization, Civil War, and Massacre. in post-war Asia, 1945 to 1955. Dr. Specter, thank you so much for joining the show. Thanks for having me.

And the other part of your biography, which we were just discussing before we started recording, which I'd like to return to, is your Marine. Served in Vietnam, stayed in for quite some time in the reserves after that. What did you do in the Marines in Vietnam? Well, my MOS was O-A artillery, but sometime after I finished the infantry school, I was fooled out and told that I was going to go to Vietnam to be the historian for the third marine amphibious force because I had a graduate degree in history. So they decided I should do that.

And after a fairly short period of orientation at Quantico, that's what I did. To what extent were you aware, sort of serving there in that capacity in the late 60s, of what had preceded you in this country. I speak from some experience when I say that it's probably less a marine attitude, as much as it is, an American attitude, that the history of a place where we are deployed tends to begin in our minds roughly about when we arrive there. So I served in Afghanistan in 9 and 10,

and I would say our sort of units' collective memory of events in Afghanistan and southern Afghanistan began at about 2008 when a Marine Expeditionary unit first deployed to our area. And we were pretty good on the politics and personalities of the area. back until 2008. And before that, may as well have been, you know, another century. And of course, your book that we're talking about today, you treat the French War in Indochina extensively. Was that at all on your mind back in the late 60s as a lieutenant there? Well, it was only on my mind because in preparation for taking up my duties as a historian, I was trained at Quantico for, I think it was

about two months. And so I had to find out something about the war. And I also read about the French war. But otherwise, I wouldn't have, I knew vaguely that the French had been there. But had I not had that period of preparation, I wouldn't have known anything in particular either. Was there any sort of physical evidence of their war around you? And you said you've been a dengue? I learned out, as we were discussing earlier, three maps headquarters was actually built around an old French barracks across the river from the city of Danang. And I know we used some of the old barrack buildings that were still usable when we were there, although I don't think anybody ever did, other than they were old French barracks, I don't

think anybody ever discussed anything about the French being there. Right. Well, let's let's step back completely then to World War II and sort of set the scene for the narrative you present in your book. And then we'll, we'll zoom it. I'll come back to Vietnam. I want to focus on China a bit. And we'll do, you know, Korea and Indonesia, if we can find the time. I mean, I have to say the book for its, you know, it's extraordinarily, you do a wonderful job of sort of knitting together coherent, coherently, these extraordinarily disparate events, you know, between the, you know, the end of the war and the civil war in China, the French war in Indochina, the Dutch in Indonesia, you know, sort of all these things which sort of occupy roles of varying prominence in the American consciousness.

I will say, you know, growing up with a, you know, a reasonably good education, my vision, my, my, what I thought had happened in Asia after World War II was that, you know, we won, we defeated Japan, things got kind of quiet. Then in 1950, we had the Korean War, and then things got kind of quiet after that again. And, you know, the French were fighting in Vietnam, kind of on the periphery, but, you know, didn't seem that important. And then, of course, we had the Vietnam War. And that was sort of my, I think not an uncommon, like American vision of Pacific history post-1945. Obviously, as you sort of movingly and compellingly document, it's much messier, bloodier, and more significant than that.

What are the basic forces at work in 1945 at the end of the war? Japan is defeated and at the highest level, you know, what happens next? What are the big, big movements at work? Well, one of the problems was it wasn't completely clear what was going to happen next. The U.S. had done fairly extensive planning about, the occupation of Japan, but they hadn't given much thought to what was otherwise going to happen in Asia. The President Roosevelt had a general view of what the post-war world should be, that there should be an international association of nations to keep the peace. That was the UN,

and that the great powers that had come together to defeat Japan and Germany, should have a prominent place in that, and that was the origin of the Security Council. And the idea was that this organization and the victorious powers would work together to ensure international peace. And then there were lots of other international arrangements like the World Bank and so on that were established to, again, deal with what we're anticipated to be international problems that might lead to lead once again to war. But there wasn't any specific plans for most of Asia. The U.S. saw China as a place that was led by people who wanted to be just like the U.S. that wanted to emulate the U.S. and become a big democracy. Of course, that was turned out

not exactly to be the case, but the idea was that China would be treated as a great power and that it would be given an opportunity to develop as a democratic nation now that it was finally free of Japanese aggression. Beyond that, the U.S. had no particular interest or even much knowledge of the rest of Asia. And what had been, I guess you could have been, I guess, could ask this question in a bunch of different directions. What had been the attitudes of the local sort of nationalist groups to become extremely significant at the end of the war, whether in China, you know, Vietnam, elsewhere, towards their Japanese occupiers? Were they uniformly hostile? And then you could ask the question in the other direction. What had been, how did the Japanese sort of

portray themselves to distinguish themselves from, you know, the imperialist's, you know, the imperialist who had preceded them, the British and French and Dutch and so forth. Yes, well, the Japanese said that they had come to liberate Asia from the European imperialism and the setup. They called it the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. And many people are elements in a lot of the countries that were under Japanese occupation, did cooperate with the Japanese with varying degrees of enthusiasm, but except in the case of Indochina, because the Japanese allowed the French colonial administration in Indochina

to continue to run things right up until the last months of the war. But in other countries, some nationalists cooperated with the Japanese, as some didn't, depending on their presiding. particular ideology. In the case of Indonesia, there were nationalists who hated the Japanese and there were nationalists like Sukarno and Haata, who were perfectly willing to cooperate with the Japanese if they thought it would for, if it would help to achieve independence. But he, the pro-Japanese nationalist and the anti-Japanese nationals, actually were still in touch with each other and cooperated.

They, whether they differed as to whether cooperating with the Japanese was worthwhile or not, but they all had in mind that the Japanese were going to go and then they would achieve independence. I guess my, the really only, the first time I encountered the complexity of what you're describing was I was in college and I read Paul Scott's Raj Quartet. I don't know if you've ever, if you've ever had the pleasure, but he talks about, I had no idea. someone who was interested in the Second World War, I had absolutely no idea about, was it the Indian National Army, which fights for the Japanese, right, in Burma, in India. And it was,

it was mind-blowing to me that this was, but it makes it, there's a logic to it, of course. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, that was part of the Japanese, period of Japanese occupation in Southeast Asia. And lots of Indian prisoners did join the, you. Indian National Army. A lot of others didn't, and they considered the INA to be traitors. And after end of World War II, it was a great controversy in India about whether these guys should be tried for treason or not. Of course, the British wanted to try them. And I think some of them were put on trial, but the trials were very unpopular. And they were defended by prominent nationalist barristers, I think Nehru defended some of them. And so they were looked on as

people who had done the wrong thing for the right reasons. And eventually, I think the trials just ended. Nobody was really jailed for their collaboration. Let's talk about China for a bit, if we could. It's 1945. War ends. Japanese are defeated. There's still a bunch of Japanese left knocking around, I think, on the mainland, right? And we send in the Marines. Talk a little bit about American policy in China right after the war, 45 into 46. Well, the U.S. did send in the Marines to North China. The idea was that Chinese forces, that is Chinese nationalist forces, Shankar Shik's forces, were not in North China. They were in southwest China a long way away. so that to temporarily stabilize things, keep an eye,

received the Japanese surrender, keep an eye on these thousands of Japanese troops who were still there, that the U.S. would send the Marines to North China. And also, by the way, because the Soviets had entered the war, and the Soviets had occupied Manchuria, and in some cases we're advancing into North China, The idea was the Marines would be a barrier to that. So at one point, there were two Marine divisions sent to North China. And the last Marines didn't leave, I think, until the spring of, probably the spring of

1949. Of course, most of them might look at a good deal before that. And there are efforts, I mean, obviously, this is the final phase of the struggle between the communists and the nationalists in China, but they're American efforts to broker peace, right? I mean, talk about George Marshall being sent out there. Another episode that I think is not well remembered. General Marshall generally considered to be the architect, the victory at World War II was, I just retired. And then President Truman sent him to China to try to broker some kind of peace between the communists and nationalists. And he did.

achieve a very temporary agreement between the two sides, but didn't last very long. And it was not completely the fault of the agreement or the Marshall's fault, or the fact was that soon after the Marshall mission began, the Russians also began withdrawing their troops from Manchuria. and Manchuria, which was a highly industrialized part of China under the Japanese, and also had all kinds of mineral resources, also grew a lot of food, and it was too rich prize for Shankar Shack to give up. But during the war, it had been a major base for the communists, so they weren't going to give it up either.

And so the temptation to take over Manchuria on the part of the two sides was pretty irresistible. And even though Marshall foresaw that this was going to lead this civil war, that Shankajek was not going to be able to completely defeat the communists. Nevertheless, both the nationalists and the communists decided to go at it and try to capture Manchuria. And that led to extended fighting in other parts of northern China and then all over China by 48, 47, rather. And just to give people a sense of the scale of the violence, you know, compare it to the violence during the war itself and the war with the Japanese. Is this more violent, less violent, as bad as the war from the perspective of the Chinese? I think in terms of the casualties, it wasn't quite as bad, but it was.

It was still very bloody, lots of civilian casualties. And the civilian casualties weren't necessarily, mostly because of civilians being caught in the fighting, although that happened. But it was also because of starvation and forced migration. And, of course, the spread of disease, it comes with a shortage of food and exposure to the elements so that the number of civilians killed as well as the number of military who died in the civil war was pretty high. And this came right on the heels of World War II. Nobody, if you had taken a public opinion poll in China and you'd ask people, well, how many of you are in favor

of fighting another war? You would have probably had like 2 percent who said yes, but Shunkajek and Mao Zetung weren't really into public opinion. They were determined to duke it out no matter at what it cost. And so, and the cost was high. So talk a bit about American objectives in China through 49. And, you know, talk about the nature of Truman's support such as it was for the nationalists, which could seem quite ambivalent. And this became, of course, a major issue on the right in American politics. I guess a crisper way of asking this question is, you know, Did we lose China? That is to say, was the nationalist collapse preventable? Yeah, there was after, of course, after 1949, there was tremendous shock in the U.S. that the

communists had gained this complete victory in China. And there was a lot of searching for scapegoats who had, how did we lose China? How could the Chinese do this to us? After all, we'd done for them, saving them from the Japanese and World War II and all the aid we'd given us and everything. So what happened? There must have been, must have been some incompetent or maybe disloyal Americans who were responsible for all this. And the idea was to, especially on the part of Republican politicians, was to find them out. And so there was a lot of this who lost China business half in the years after 1949. This is also the period of the

Red Scare and McCarthyism. So that fit right in with the search for communists and disloyal people in the government. Even General Marshall was accused of being a communist sympathizer

or the John Birch Society said he was actually a communist. Of course, they said that I think they had even generalizing Eisenhower was a communist, according to John Birchers. So, but there was this tremendous shock and disbelief over the fall of China as it was caused. And then the Korean War, of course, hardened this antagonism towards red China, as it was called, made the U.S. China antagonism even worse.

So the U.S. had no relations with China for more than a decade. or more than probably two decades, I guess. Sure. So I guess my question is, you know, setting aside the obvious hysteria and conspiratorialism of the birchers and all that nonsense, you know, is it nevertheless the case that had Truman made different policy decisions or if Dewey had been elected in 48, that there was a reasonable chance that the nationalist might have prevailed or at least held on in a significant part of the country? in your view. Well, it really wasn't anything that could be, could have been done for the nationalists. There were, there were people in Washington who, you know, wanted to try to the, they had various

schemes. General Chanel was, was one who retired Hero World War II. They had all these ideas. Well, maybe, maybe the nationalists can hold out in the mountains, you know, and of course, the communists that had spent years learning to fight in the mountains. That's where they had held out to begin with. And all these other nutty ideas, there were some competent warlord generals who were able to take on the communists, but they weren't united. Shankajek wouldn't support them, didn't trust them. So the idea of, you know, maybe there's a part of China that can hold out against

against the communists. It never really came to anything because in fact, the anti-communist forces could never, never really get together. Shankajek didn't trust any of them, and most of them didn't like Shankaj Shack. So there was no chance of that, although there was a lot of talk about that. And the other thing was that there were lots of accusations that the U.S. hadn't given China enough support. I hadn't given them enough military aid or economic aid, but the U.S. had given them an enormous amount of aid. And the other thing is that a lot of the aid, the military aid that the U.S. was giving to the nationalists ended up in the hands of the communists because a whole divisions of nationalist troops would surrender and all their

equipment would be taken over by the communists. And it turned out in the Indochina War, the Chinese communists, when they decided to support the Vietmen, they provided them with American weapons, with howitzers and so on that they had captured in China. And, of course, the French were receiving American howitzers, too. So both sides, the French, some French officer, officers, he used to say both sides are fighting the war with American weapons. What was the American attitude, pre-Korean warrest, pre-Summer 50, what is the American attitude towards, you know, getting caught up in these various questions of the future of the Western Pacific?

It made a lot of effort to get out of Korea as soon as they could. On the other hand, they didn't want to leave the Koreans to collapse or they didn't. didn't want to see the North, the North Koreans take over all of Korea. But on the other hand, they didn't want to be responsible for Korea. And the solution they came up with was to turn Korea, the question of Korea over to the United Nations. The United Nations did set up a commission for special commission for Korea, which supervised elections in South Korea, because the North Koreans wouldn't have anything to do with it. The elections in South Korea weren't exactly honest either, but they gave the U.S. a kind of a fig leaf to get out of South Korea, get out of

Korea, because there were a lot of other places the U.S. was much more concerned about, such as, of course, Europe and the Middle East. Yeah. Well, I guess that's what I'm kind of driving towards is it strikes me as we speak about the events of, you know, 49 and 50. how much in some ways they're still very much with us. I mean, that is to say that the world that was decided in 1949 with this sort of catastrophic victory of the Chinese Communist Party with the remnants of the nationals holding on Taiwan. I mean, that is a situation that persists to this day and is at the center, right, of world affairs today. And another thing that is an obvious parallel is this sort of debate amongst American policymakers about the balance of our attention and resources

between Europe, the Middle East and Asia. You know, it's the same debate today. I mean, I'm watching as we speak in our office here, this CNN is on and there's a discussion of this Russian missile apparently hitting on the Polish side of the Polish-Ukraine border. There's this argument, you know, should we be all in for Ukraine, is going all in for Ukraine, prevent us from defending Taiwan. And it seems like some of the same dynamics of debate were very much present in the late 40s where we were very invested, right, in preventing communism in Greece, communism in Turkey and so forth. And that was seen to be in tension, right, with commitments in Asia. Is that, is that right? Well, it is ironic that decades and decades later, we're not talking about the fate of Taiwan and the danger of a PRC invasion of Taiwan.

And as I point out in the book, when Shankaj Shek retreated to Taiwan and nobody expected him to last, first of all, there was just an assumption, well, the communists are going to just sail over to Taiwan and take it over. It's only a matter of time. Besides that, Shankar Sheck's completely incompetent. You know, he won't be able to run things. In Taiwan, any better than you did on the mainland. And then, of course, comes to Korean War, which prevents China from invading Taiwan. And at the same time,

Shankar Shek does clean up his act to a certain extent. I mean, the nationalist government on Taiwan is still a dictated. dictatorship and it's pretty brutal in terms of dealing with the opposition. But at the same time, it's a fairly well-run government. It's an honest government for the first time, nothing like a nationalist regime on the mainland. So that given that and given the Korean War, Shankashik is able to survive. Let's talk a bit about Korea and the Korean War. And I'll ask you a question about the war that I sort of have the same question about Vietnam. But, you know, how does Kim Il-sung consolidate power in the north?

What is the balance in terms of as he looks to the communist powers to his north and west? What is the balance of his support between the Chinese and between the Russians? And then finally, what leads to the decision to invade? Well, Kim Il-sung is basically interested, basically has to deal with the Russians. And his main attention is with getting the Russians to support him against his rivals. He has both communist and non-communist rivals in the North, and he's a pretty shrewd maneuver. He comes out on top against his North Korea,

his rivals in North Korea, through getting the unconditional support at the end of the Russians who, of course, were occupying Korea for first the years following, following World War, too. He's friendly to China, and he even sends some troops, some Korean troops to help fight in the Chinese Civil War. He also sends some food and other materials that the Chinese need to help in the Civil War. But he's really his main concern is his relationship with the Russians.

And, of course, that's the way he is. able to invade South Korea. He gets the approval of the Chinese, but he doesn't get any help from the Chinese. He doesn't want any. He basically is getting all his support from the Soviets. And then same question about Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam. What is what is he, you know, what is, what is the source of his power outside of his borders? What's the balance between Chinese involvement and Russian involvement? And the, the Vietnamese, we're on. own for quite a while. From 1947 through 1949, they had no formal allies. And they were, of course, friendly with the communist Chinese. Ho Chi Minh knew some of them, but they were far away until the

end of the Chinese Civil War. Ho was an admirer of Stalin, but Stalin didn't do anything for him. Stalin didn't trust Ho. And so that at the end of the Chinese Civil War, Ho literally walks to China. He walks all the way to the border with China and then goes by train to Beijing, where he's greeted very warmly and promised help by the Chinese. And then the Chinese suggests that he'd go to Moscow. Mao is still in Moscow talking to Slashire.

So Mao also says that he thinks that Ocemin should come to Moscow. So Ocemin goes to Moscow. It doesn't get much of a greeting from Stalin, but Stalin does agree to help to recognize the Vietmen government and to give them military support, but most of it is supposed to come through the Chinese. So I guess what I'm getting at with these questions is, you know, there's a sort of understanding from the right of the events of the period that you document

that what is going on is a relatively cohesive expansion of or rising up of communist or communist movements and that American policy really ought to be or ought to have been directed at, you know, stopping this, rolling it back. And I guess there's a sort of, there's a, there's a sort of mirror opposite understanding from the left, right, that what is going on. are these nationalist movements rising up against imperialism, either in a literal way against French imperialism and Dutch imperialism in Indonesia or in a sort of second order way against its American inheritors, even if the Americans are not exactly like the Europeans.

And I guess the broad question I have for you is of these two understandings, which do you favor? A, B, C, neither of the above. It's more complicated. How would you explain what going on? There was a general understanding. understanding in the U.S., especially after 1949, but even before that, with the beginning of the Cold War in Europe, there was a general feeling that the communists were going to try to expand

indefinitely. And they were going to try to expand into any country that seemed vulnerable, that seemed like they could have a chance. And so it was imperative that the, U.S. and its allies stop this worldwide spread of communism. And that's one of the reasons the U.S. has a completely different attitude toward Indochina and Indonesia, even though they're both countries that are fighting for independence against their colonial rulers. In Indonesia, they had a tremendous piece of luck. And that was, there was a communist uproval. against the Republic of Indonesia that was put down. There's a very bloody uprising, but it didn't last very long.

And this convinced the Americans that the Indonesians are really on the right side. We had to support them because otherwise you might have a communist government there. So the idea was put pressure on the Dutch to leave. And so the general approach of the U.S. was, communism is bad, colonialism is bad. So what we have to do, we have to find governments or leaders, parties in these newly independent countries that are pro-democracy, that aren't communist, and of course we don't expect them to be, and of course they're going to be anti-colonialists. So we need to find true nationalist leaders, but who are not communists. And of course,

That leads to all kinds of grotesque partnerships during the next 20 years of the Cold War, all kinds of bloody dictators who the U.S. decides to support because they're anti-communists, or at least they say that they're anti-communists. And how do our European allies in the war react to the Samaric vision of international affairs? Well, the Europeans are mostly concerned, of course, with the reconstruct. of Europe and protection against the Soviets. And so the Marshall Plan and NATO are sort of the keystones of American policy. And the West European countries are very enthusiastic about both of them.

They're not very interested in what's going on in Asia, except in the sense that some of them may be like the Dutch and the French are still trying to hang on to their colonies. but generally Europeans are all for containing the communists, but in Europe, they're not much interested in Asia. Let's finish in Vietnam, I suppose. We have the Chinese Civil War resolves itself sort of to the extent that it does in 1949. I guess Indonesia achieves its independence in the same year. And it's in 49 also.

49 as well. And then we have the Korean War, which ends sort of inconclusively in 15. It doesn't end, does it? Pause. Well, again, the fighting ends in 53. Right. How do things play out for the French throughout, I guess, in the year following that? What is the state of play at the end of the period you write about?

The Soviets, British, and Americans in the French all agree that this is after the death of Stalin and the first sort of rapporteur between the Soviets and the West. and they meet in Geneva, Switzerland, they decide there should be an international conference on Korea. The Korean War has just ended, but nothing's been settled. And it should be an international conference on Korea and Indochina to try to settle those wars. And that's the Geneva Conference of 1954, which doesn't go very far to settle the Korean War, but it does settle the war in Indochina with this so-called Geneva agreements. Any ambition to carry on the narrative post-post-1955?

No, I think there's a lot of people that are working on that. I think one thing that, one aspect of that hasn't been thoroughly covered, there's one good book on it is the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese, war. We really don't know much about that. That went on for quite a while and apparently was quite destructive. There's not much on that so far. But no, I don't have any. I think my next book is going to go back to probably World War II or even before. Ronald Spector, author of A Continent erupts to Civil War and Massacre in Post War Asia, 45 to 55. Thank you so much for joining the show. Thank you.

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