Ukraine Situation Similar to China’s Civil War

Sometimes, when I’m deep into my research on the life of W.E. Dimorier, I make discoveries that are compelling enough to have me take a slight detour. I reason that these are relevant to the project, because the title of Dimorier’s biography will likely be, The Far Reach of a Farm Boy. It’s become evident that Dimorier’s influence reached far away to China and far through the ages to situations like what is happening in Ukraine today. On a grander scale, though, it illustrates the important role history plays in today’s world affairs.

The detour to my research was sparked by a letter to Dimorier, dated December 6, 1949, from V. K. Wellington Koo, Chinese Ambassador to the United States. The document is a thank-you note for Dimorier’s feedback on the ambassador’s November 1949 Reader’s Digest article, “China is Worth Saving.” The detailed article about China’s fight against communism sounds much like Ukraine’s present struggle.

In the letter, Koo mentions his experience, more than 40 years earlier, as a student at Cook Academy, the upstate-New York college prep school where Dimorier taught for two years before beginning a long career in Erie, PA, as an educator and administrator.

“It is always a pleasant thing to me to recall the year I spent at Cook Academy. Indeed, I feel I owe much to my teachers like your good self whose kindly personal interest in my work and progress while I was a student there has had an uplifting influence on me.”

Koo further states, “I have always believed that the American people are fundamentally in sympathy and agreement with China’s cause—to preserve her independence and freedom. And I hope and believe that China’s struggle against Communist domination will yet triumph.” [See an image of the letter at the end of this post.]

From our perspective in the 21^st century, we know that the ambassador’s wish did not come true. A couple of months prior to Koo’s article, Secretary of State Dean Acheson issued a statement regarding America’s position on aid to China that hinted the situation was a lost cause due to the lack of confidence of the Chinese people in their own government.

So, with massive amounts of financial and military help from the Soviet Union and pressure from the United States government for the communists and nationalists to form a coalition, the Chinese Communist Party waged a successful Civil War against the government, resulting in the People’s Republic of China. As a result, in the years that followed, most Americans regarded the Chinese as itchy-fingered Reds, and we watched communism sweep into Korea and Vietnam like a plague.

Koo’s article is not available electronically, but I was able to obtain his manuscript from a university and a physical copy of the Reader’s Digest from an eBay seller. So, I can provide some compelling highlights that have an eerie similarity to the situation in Ukraine today. In fact, I believe that had the United States been able to fulfill Koo’s request, Russia would not have invaded Crimea and would not be bullying Ukraine today. China would be standing with us, and Russia might be, too.

The Back Story on China’s Road to Communism

The ambassador wrote that the U.S. had done a fine job of holding up Chinese independence until 1941, when the United State’s objection to the Japanese invasion of China led to Pearl Harbor. By 1944, major differences had arisen between the U.S. and China. There seemed to be an implicit support of communism by several American officials. The U.S. asserted that the communists and nationalists (the Chinese government) just needed to try to get along. It was even strongly suggested that the Communist Party be taken into the Chinese government. Based on past events, Koo did not believe that solution was viable.

Koo then took the readers on a historical journey of China’s struggle against communism. He recalled that, in 1921, Communist International (Comintern) ordered that the Communist Party of China be established. Comintern was an international communist organization formed in Moscow in 1919.

By 1927, the communists had tried to take over the government but were thwarted by Chiang Kai-shek, China’s leader at the time. Fast-forward ten years, and in 1937, Mao Tse-tung, the communist leader, agreed to work with the nationalists against the Japanese.  Unfortunately, according to Koo, Mao stated to his followers, “The war between China and Japan is an excellent opportunity for the development of our party. Our determined policy is 70 percent self-development, 20 percent compromise and ten percent fight the Japanese.”

For the next 14 years, Japan occupied China amidst constant betrayals by communists. The ambassador wrote, “The Communist barrage of propaganda produced disunity, suspicion and strife among the Chinese people.” Koo thought that this served to strengthen the “official American policy of promoting the acceptance of Communists into the National Government.” He also thought it was odd that representatives of the United States government stopped in Moscow on their way to China to implement the policy and “induce Generalissimo Chiang to form a coalition with the Communists.” The three representatives were: Henry A. Wallace, Roosevelt’s vice president; Donald Wallace, head of the War Production Board; and General Patrick J. Hurley, U.S. Ambassador to China.

In February 1945, when Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin sat down to sign post-WWII agreements, numerous concessions were made to Russia, including “pre-eminent interests” in Manchuria, a territory situated between China and Russia. Koo said, “Thus by a stroke of pen, China lost what it had, by blood and toil, tried to preserve—its territorial integrity.”

Russia used Manchuria to stage its offense against Japan, and when the Japanese fled, they left behind arms and ammunition that would prove useful to the Chinese communists against their own country in a civil war. All the while the United States was trying to help everyone just get along, the Soviets were helping the Chinese communists get ready for the takeover.

After General George C. Marshall, successor to Hurley, acted as mediator between the nationalists and the communists, resulting in a January 1946 truce, the nationalist hands were tied by a cease fire, and the communists continued their move to occupy more and more of China. Just one year after signing the truce, the communists had increased their hold from 67 to 319 of the 2,000 Chinese counties. Koo said all the while, the U.S. “refused to grant export licenses for arms and ammunition. Added to this embargo was repeated pressure on the government to accept the demands of the Communists.”

Further crippling the nationalists were a $500-million bank loan never granted, a silenced plea by United States General Albert C. Wedemeyer for aid against the communists, and $125 million in aid, approved by U.S. Congress, that was delayed for seven months.

Pleas for Help from the West

Koo said, “Chinese Communists are tools of the Soviet Union. They are like Communists everywhere: Russian dominated, supported and led. Their leaders take their orders from Moscow. They are fanatically anti-American.” [Chilling.]

The ambassador then quoted Mao Tse-tung’s own words to affirm his assertions, “Internally, we belong to the anti-imperialist front, headed by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”

Koo cautioned, “Further appeasement of Communism will accomplish nothing. Western diplomacy – like that of China – is accustomed to honorable negotiation, to reasonable give-and-take, to that intangible but forceful thing called good sportsmanship. With all Communists deceit is a major weapon in negotiating, honor is nonexistent and sportsmanship is laughed at as a bourgeois weakness.” Further, “Every instance of appeasement of Soviet Communism throughout the world has ended in failure.”

Koo argued, “China is worth saving and can still be saved. But prompt action is required. Led by the United States, all democratic nations can join in this task. They can reaffirm their historic friendship for China, and reinforce their policy in three major respects.” The ambassador followed with his three-part plea.

1. “Help free China retain a foothold in an area that can be defended and strengthened.” Nationalists still held about half of China at this time. Koo estimated that $287 million of arms aid would be adequate for six months, and $36 million could be used to reinforce the economic situation and maintain civilian morale.
2. “Help us demonstrate that any area of freedom, protected from threats and pressures of military aggression, can beat Communism in production, education, welfare, and happy living . . . It would restore the prestige of the United States in the minds and hearts of the Chinese and our neighbors. It would be decisive in the battle against Communism where half the world’s population is at stake.”
3. “There must be no recognition of the Communist regime in China by governments of free peoples. I would not be a true spokesman for China if I did not remind democratic statesmen what their recognition of Communist conquest would do. It would serve grim notice to the peoples of Asia that might makes right, that he who conquers can rule, that all moral principals dissolve in the face of ruthless aggression.”

Koo reminded the readers of China’s permanent membership in the five-country United Nations Security Council. “A communist China means that the Chinese puppets in the U.N. would side always with their Soviet masters, enormously strengthening the strangling hands of the Russians and their satellites.”

In closing, the ambassador said, “Time is of the essence. Delay in helping China now will not solve the problem of the communist threat in Asia. It will only remove the bulwark which protects Indo-China, Indonesia, Siam, Burma, Malaya and the rest of Asia. Prompt action is needed to save the free peoples of Asia and the rest of the world from enslavement and the scourge of a third World War.”

We know the outcome. Perhaps it was the fear of a third world war that added to the U.S. reluctance to step up aid to China, but what was the result? For decades after, we had a Cold War with both the Soviet Union and China on the other side. Death and destruction followed in Korea and Vietnam.

China’s History Compared to Ukraine Today

This brings us to the current situation in Ukraine. The similarities to the Chinese Communist history are strong. Ukraine is heading toward a civil war. But, judging from the relatively uneventful takeover of Crimea, the annexation of Ukraine might soon follow in similar fashion, without much resistance, unless bully Russia is put in its place. While Russia is no longer technically a communist country, it has been leaning more and more in that direction, especially under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, who started his career as a loyal communist.

Insurgents, who call themselves part of the Donetsk People’s Republic, occupy official buildings in nearly a dozen Ukraine cities. Putin denies that Russia is behind them. They refuse to recognize the new government of Ukraine, which came about after President Viktor Yanukovych refused to partner with the European Union and abandoned his country in the face of protests over his alliance with Russia. The Associated Press ran a succinct review of the situation in Ukraine.

Last Thursday, in what Secretary of State John Kerry called a good day’s work, a tentative agreement was reached to stop the violence in Ukraine, but the agreement does not require Russia to withdraw its 40,000 troops at the Ukraine border. Obama is skeptical of the agreement and has stated that if Russia doesn’t hold up its end of the bargain, sanctions stronger than those already in place will be imposed.

The U.S. has moved some fighter jets into Poland and Lithuania and has threatened to send more, but the action taken so far has been in the form of sanctions on wealthy Russian individuals. Meanwhile, Russia has boots on the ground in Crimea, which was stolen from Ukraine, and plenty of military force on the present Ukraine border.

The Associated Press reports that Ukraine has requested military aid from the United States, but the Obama administration has stated that lethal assistance has not been considered because of the fear of escalation. AP reports, “The U.S. has already sent Ukraine other assistance, such as pre-packaged meals for its military.”

It’s possible that if the West had done more to help China in 1949-50, a military conflict would indeed have occurred, possibly WWIII. If that had occurred, though, and the West had won, China would have been aligned with the United States, rather than Russia. And Russia would have, like most bullies, been neutralized. At that time, the U.S. had a monopoly on nuclear weapons. Instead, China and Russia now have an unofficial alliance, and China recently abstained on a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Russia’s annexing of Crimea. Putin says his country and China are allies, while China maintains that it is on the fence.

George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” It’s essential to look back at history to see what could happen in the future. To Americans, the situation in the Ukraine might be just another one in a succession of unrests that we’ve become accustomed to over recent years, but when put into context and layered over a monumental moment in history, the similarities between the Ukraine situation and the death of the Chinese citizen’s freedom are undeniable.

Update: April 22, 2014 

Biden’s visit to Ukraine, his pledge of $58 million in aid, and the refusal to acknowledge the annexation of Crimea is a step in the right direction. Let’s hope Russia’s listening.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Overview of the Dimorier Project