US Imperialism and the political War for Korea: clash tests US position in Far East

Submitted by dalcassian on 6 August, 2013 - 8:03

After only four or five days of war, it has become painfully apparent that Stalinism has won the
political war for Korea. Whatever one thinks or speculates about the Russian timetable in military terms, they certainly never limited their objectives to military conquest. The Russians must have calculated on the minds and wills of the twenty millions of South
Korean people. This is now assured
them by the sheer emptiness of the alternative.
The Koreans will not fight
or wish success to a foreign army
which is already tainted with Syngman
Rhee, and whose aims are, at the
minimum, restoration of this decrepit
police-state and the establishment of
permanent military occupation.
This aspect of the war will become
more apparent in coming months. It
will come to haunt the State Department,
frustrate the military and make
ridiculous the entire American intervention.
For the U. S. has presented
no program for South Korea other
than military re-conquest so that this
area can be retained, for the moment
only, in its Pacific strategic plan. And
it is stuck with just that. It can win
mountains, valleys, towns, or even
Seoul itself, without having won anything
but space.
If the U. S. entered the war because
South Korea needed to be defended
from brutal and planned aggression,
it now finds that this South
Korea hardly exists. If it came to the
aid of the army of Syngman Rhee, it
now has become the substitute for it
since that army has disappeared. If it
came to salvage the helpless Rhee
state, this state is now only a tiny
clique of frightened men without the
ability even to call upon its people to
defend it. If Rhee was formerly alienated
from the people, he is today isolated
from them and this isolation is
deepened by the American army. For
if Rhee was formerly stigmatized as
a U. S. puppet, he is now completely
identified with the U. S. since it is
dear he has no other way to defend
himself or reestablish his power save
throvgh the U. S.
This being so, the chief outcome
of the first week of war was not so
much military reversals, but the fundamental
American defeat on the
political field-and, whereas new battles
may reverse earlier military
trends, there is little prospect of recovery
in politics.
Those sad libearls and non-Stalinist-
Leftists who rationalized their
latest rush to the colors by accepting
the United Nations facade for the
real thing will have ultimately to
face their embarrassment. One cannot
indefinitely support a war for "principle"
if that principle somehow becomes
increasingly elusive, and never
becomes clothed in the flesh and
blood that can only be acquired by
support from the people involved.
The liberal critics of Washington's foreign
policy had been most righteous
in denouncing its Korean policy. And
correctly so. Five years of bolstering
the most hated and anti-popular r'egime
in all Asia, outside of Stalinland
itself, are now bearing frui t.
BOTH RUSSIA AND THE UNITED
STATES collaborated in reducing the
Korean people to pawns in their
global contest. Both viciously mocked
the deep desire for independence
and national unity in that land. But
with some very important differences
in the two policies: Russia's puppet
in the North revolutionized social relations,
distributed the land to the
landless and created a new class of
privileged bureaucrats who preyed on
the peasantry. Through "mixed companies"
Russia penetrated all the
more productive areas of the economy,
coordinated it with its North
Manchurian and Siberian strllcture.
But in the process it restored industry,
increased the number of workers,
and granted them special privileges,
abolishing the millenium-old Asiatic
society.
Stalinism substituted its own mod,
ern despotism which, because it is totalitarian,
demands of everyone a
total transformation, demands that
every Korean accept the new gospel
without hesitation or question. How
successful Stalinism has been in these
five years, it is hard to say. Certainly
there is evidence that the unruHled
surface covered an accumulation of
discontent, particularly among the
peasants. Millions of Northerners
fled their homes, or were driven out,
and came South during this time. But,
by all these means, modern Stalinism
created for itself a relatively wide
base of support and reduced the opposition
to an ineffectual force.
The clearest example of the Russian
method is, of course, the Northern
army. This is an elite corps, wellfed
and clothed, trained in the use of
the latest weapons. An integral part
of Russia's Far Eastern legions, it is
equipped as befits an adjunct, albeit
a minor one, of a great power. Beneath
these accoutrements, and making
them effective, is the heavy indoctrination
of the soldiers, the constant
propaganda, the ever-present political
commissar-all of which supply
morale, purpose and confidence
in the leadership.
By CONTRAST., CONSIDER the former
Southern army: inferior in numbers
and equipment and training it was
the nucleus for a police force rather
than an army. Its armaments consisted
of rifles and some light artillery; no
planes, tanks or heavy guns. It could
not defend the country because it was
not even a well-rounded military
force, other considerations aside.
One must ask how this came to be:
that the creation of the enormously
powerful U. S. should be so poor indeed.
The whole answer is not yet
clear, but the fact that it is so is
damning enough. For the fact is that
neither the state nor the U. S. military
mission has any faith in their own
army and, therefore, hesitated to
equip it. This absence of faith is no
secret. It has been freely expressed
and was based on the reality that the
army was honey-combed with dissenters.
Desertions were frequent. On
many occasions whole battalions, with
their officers, went over to the North.
Last December, an entire garrison
went over to rebellion. This revolt
was suppressed by a bloody terror
which turned the former rebels into
guerrillas. The army was a constant
source of manpower and arms for the
guerrilla forces. Corruption, which is
the normal life of the state, was the
code of the officer corps. The army
had no morale because it had no faith
in its leaders or their regime or its
very own purpose. It knew that its
main function was to suppress popular
movements. It was an arm of the
hated police. Above all, every soldier
knew that Syngman Rhee was not depending
on him, but that the regime's
defense program depended on speedy
U. S. intervention.
But an army can only reflect social
origins. On the heels of Japanese collapse
the entire nation had risen in
an explosion of freedom. A political
movement embracing all classes except
the tiny collaborationist aristocracy
arose out of this jubilation to
form the first people's republic. The
U. S. occupation suppressed this really
popular movement out of fear and
ignorance. Once the harm was done
the occupation had to lean more and
more heavily on the most reactionary
groups. As U. S. world policy became
oriented toward the cold war it
sought in Korea such support as
would be most adequate to its strategic
needs there against Russia. That
is, the U. S. had to lean on those
groups which sought to maintain the
social order and thereby, presumably,
social peace. Since the U. S. feared
the people, because of the danger to
law and order, it became allied to
those Koreans who feared the people.
The U. S. became the sustaining prop
to the crumbling Asiatic medievalism
whose native Rhee government remained
in power through constant
terror, kidnappings, arrests, murder
-and a ubiquitous police operating
without legal restraint.
Intolerable as political condition
were, the economy was worse. Inflation
became so rampant that Ambassador
Jessup demanded some definite
steps against it early in 1950 or else
ECA funds would be withheld. Industry
was at a standstill. The division
of the country, the heavy state
bureaucracy's drain on agriculture on
top of that of the landlord's, added
to the growing military establishment,
lay like the proverbial albatross about
the neck of the people. The point was
that South Korea, no more than the
rest of Asia, could remain aloof from
the need for deep-going change in order
to survive in the modern world.
North Korea made its own reactionary
adaptation. But in the south, U. S.
policy supported those. who stood for
the ancient and impossible order.
That is why the regime was so
hated, as the U. S. also came to be,
by indentification. Its every act had to
be one of restraint against the inevitable
desires of the people for change.
The popular volcano was kept from
eruption by sitting on it. Even so
Seoul reported 19,066 killed, 3,281
wounded, 7,140 captured and 2,144
surrendered in its chronic anti-guerilla
war in 1949 alone. According to northern
reports these skirmishes took place
in all 8 of the south's provinces, in 7
out of 15 cities, 119 out of 133 counties.
It was estimated that in spite of
constant suppression campaigns, the
army's chief function, guerillas grew
from 16,000 in April 1949 to 90,000
in October, 1949. That is what South
Korea looked like on the eve of war.
Since U.S. policy in Korea was no
different from its Chinese policy, it is
now suffering the same consequences.
Washington has not got any program
to fight Stalinism. Its intervention in
Korea by force after 5 years of failure
through politics will be noted by all
Asiatic peoples, as well as by the
Koreans, as failure.
An American military victory will
achieve what? It cannot simply restore
the old regime because that regime is
in ribbons; it barely exists at all. And
besides, it would be only a matter of
time before it again succumbs to revolt
or invasion. Can the U.S. introduce
needed reforms? That is the
Chinese dilemma all over again. The
old regime has too many supporters in
Washington who would shout communist
at such effort. Besides, it would
require swapping horses in the midst
of war and who in the South can really
trust such sudden new blandishments-
that is, among those opponents
of Rhee who are not in jail? Rhee has
proved his ability to take care of his
enemies even when U.S. courted them
just as Chiang did with the Democratic
League. And the largest consideration
of all is that Washington has
dropped pretenses about reform in
favor of all-out strategic and military
considerations. That is the meaning
of the Korean act itself, not to mention
Fonnosa, Japan and Indo-China.
The American program in Korea
must be one of permanent military
occupation. The Korean people sense
this and are forced into the arms of
Stalinism thereby. The plain fact is
that the U.S. has not offered the Koreans
anything but a battlefield to
fight for. This, and not Stalinism's
armies, is the source of its victories.
July 5, 1950 JACK BRAD

New International July-August 1950

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