It may be that this should not be written on foreign soil in a foreign language, but, after three stays in this country—for many reasons—I feel at home here.1 The mere fact that we are all on the same ship, the Western World, entitles any Westerner to speak frankly on common dangers. My purpose is to show these dangers as they appeared to me and to analyze our basic weakness, through my personal experiences during 20 years of military duty.
This thesis is an individual testimony which stems from two basic assumptions: First, that the Soviets intend as they say, to conquer the world by any available means. Second, that the Westerners will continue to adhere to their Christian ideals and principles: Peace, freedom, democracy, individualism, and the search for happiness through mental and material development.
I. THE CHALLENGE
Germany was close to chaos in 1933, when the Nazis took over. Six years later—only six years—she was the most powerful single military power in the world. She conquered Europe, invaded Russia, and was close to success, but still her power was not enough to achieve a world-wide victory. History has shown similar examples where a single group, indoctrinated and trained for conquest, has extended itself to the very limits of its physical capabilities. But initial successes, no matter how great, were always stopped by the magnitude of the task. At the time of World War II, wars could not be won at the first blow. The Allied nations, once surprised, had time to organize their common resistance, and finally counterattacked. Victory, at long last, “favored the big battalions,” as Napoleon said. And in the peculiar case of Germany, she was faced with the problem of defeating another totalitarian nation—Russia.
But now the picture is dreadfully different. A single, threatening, hard-core group exists dedicated to conquest and no longer limited by traditional boundaries. Victory can now be achieved at the first blow. The “big battalions” take shape, but not on our side. Furthermore, a new type of war is already being waged, undermining man’s mind and will through persuasion and subversion. This type of warfare could very well achieve the goals by itself alone.
Here is the fantastic challenge which we Westerners face. Vaguely we all know that, but often we react as if we did not really believe it. Wishful thinking—a form of laziness stemming from our easy way of life—obsolete national pride, incredible ignorance of each other’s problems, and distrust among Allied Nations, make the West like a mosaic which has been cemented together only because of the threat. It seems that only the impending threat of an enemy could bolster our determination and strengthen our organization. But the enemy knows our weaknesses and will strive to avoid awakening us before H-hour. But then it could perhaps be too late.
II. THE FACTS
Fifteen years ago, before the West as a group had taken shape—since the threat of the East had not yet been felt—the Western Allies had a power unprecedented in history. With their technical advance, their military strength, and the atom bomb on their side, they could very well have dominated the world once and for all. Such a chance given to a single nation or group of people had never before been experienced in history.
This unique opportunity, however, was not taken. Western idealism, those democratic ideas to which we adhere, Christianity—which is no longer the Christianity of Crusaders—prevented Western expansion. This expansion was perhaps the only chance the world would have to achieve Western standards of living, and, by so doing, escape the ultimate fight in which our civilization might collapse.
Now, fifteen years later, the Communists have succeeded in seizing one-half of Europe, and two-thirds of Asia without Russia firing a single shot. Modern armies have been unable to attain victory in Korea or in Indochina. Western idealism or lack of determination, or both, have prevented Western armies from using their full strength. Below the fence, hastily built up around the Communist bloc, creeping aggression continues everywhere. Moreover, Western nations are day after day attacked by propaganda directed at the minds of uncommitted peoples who benefit from Western aid.
So great a decay, in so short a time, starting from a unique position of strength is also without precedent in history. Up to now it is not deeply felt in our countries since our material standards have not yet been affected. Numerous explanations for this are given in books and newspapers.
My purpose is not to list what others write on this problem, but only to tell what I have seen around the world, down to the village level, among the people helping or fighting our cause, to tell what I feel are the true and basic reasons for our common decline.
III. THE REASONS
A. The Faith of the Enemy
A Spanish Jail, 1943
Those Spanish Republicans, lawyers, professors, politicians, workers, 18 to 60 years old, whom I have met along with criminals, in this jail where Franco’s police threw me a few weeks ago, have lost their fight to the Fascists and most of them will also lose their Jives. From time to time, one of them disappears from the group which gathers in the prison yard, between high stone walls on which hangs a huge poster of smiling Caudillo. No one knows when his turn will come. They have lost everything—their families, their belongings; they are as vanquished as men can be, but they still have hope. They joke and show me this little slogan, which dates from the outbreak of the war:
MuSsolini
HiTler
ChAmberlain
DaLadier
QuI
ViNcero?
Who of the four men believed to have started World War II will win? The fifth—Stalin. They still have faith. They believe that the world-wide turmoil will give way to Communism, and that better days for mankind are in sight. Have not the Soviets stopped Hitler’s armies at Moscow, crushed them at Stalingrad? The Soviets have the strongest appeal ever devised, “Proletariat of the world, unite”: They will unite, sooner or later, since the world has more proletariat than bourgeoisie.
My jail-mates hate the bourgeoisie more than the Fascists. At least, they say, these Fascists are men. They believe that the bourgeoisie of democratic nations, such as France or England, are idealists without guts. They are the hypocrites who supported the Spanish Republic with words, not deeds, whereas Fascists and Soviets risked their lives in battle. The Soviets will save the Western democracies from Fascism, but in the long run, it will be the Soviets who will win. They deserve to; they are men. “We will win,” the Spanish assert.
This “We,” from men who have lost their local battle, is impressive proof of a new split in human society, a split in depth below national frontiers and beyond traditional boundaries. It is proof that the Communists, far from Moscow, are united, organized, disciplined, dedicated to their belief.
I recall our French Communists in 1938. They were the most anti-German of all. In 1939, when Stalin and Hitler made the truce which started the war, the French Communists tried to sabotage our war effort, and their chief, Maurice Thorez, deserted to Moscow. When Hitler attacked Russia, they immediately joined the French Resistance in which they are now the hard core.
Here then, between these jail walls, is a piece of the Soviet Union. Stalin has, all over the world, his underground infantry on the objectives. Here at least, with two trigger-happy sentries on the top of the wall, these jailed vanguards are no longer dangerous. Is that the only way?
Beyond the victory over Fascism, a new problem for democracies is already in sight.
B. The Methods
Indochina, 1946. Three Pictures
In a little community in Cochin China dwell a few hundred souls, all Vietnamese, most of them trained to read and write French by an old Catholic missionary who fled the village when the Viet Minh threatened his life. In a small bamboo and clay house where a family lives on rice and fish, far from civilization, the only light from the outside world is provided by reading in French. In this house, the head of the family knows how to read and believes what he reads because it is written, and because he is among the few who can read.
There are many homes like this one in this village, and in many of them, three pictures can be found: Ho Chi Minh, Stalin, Maurice Thorez. These are respectively the chief of the local revolt; the big brother who, far away, with all the means of a powerful nation, directs the crusade and helps Communist revolts all over the world; and the chief of the French Communist party, who participates in the very ranks of the enemy, in the universal revolution.
Within six months (the Viet Minh began after the Japanese surrendered) these three pictures have reached deep in the Indochina jungle, and have penetrated the mind and soul of the average people. And along with the pictures are two slogans which are never separated, “À BAS LE COLONIALISME—À BAS LE CAPITALISME” (Down with Colonialism—Down with Capitalism).
All the jungle has been undermined. The Viet Minh began to emerge when Japan overthrew the French administration in March 1945. When Japan was defeated “because the white men were lucky enough to get the first A-bomb,” the Japanese helped the Viet Minh with arms and training—the same Japanese who have demonstrated that the white man is no longer superior here.
Many educated people—in this area, that means those who can read—joined the new crusade. Somebody from abroad had given them an ideal, something to fight for, and promised them a better life. They have read about it in the leaflets and listened to the chiefs. The opponents of this crusade had their throats cut; if they escaped, their families were slaughtered. Now terror reigns in the jungle. People are silent.
One thing is obvious: in the rebels’ mind, “Colonialism” and “Capitalism” are the two enemies. If they get rid of one, they will go on fighting the other. War will not cease with the autonomy of Indochina. This is not the true problem. Ho Chi Minh may win his independence; he and the Big Brother will carry on further, and the third man in France will undermine the will of our people. We shall fight alone against an international conspiracy. No one knows here in Indochina that in Brazzaville, French Equatorial Africa, the freedom of our colonies has been solemnly proclaimed as the official objective of France. Those who know, do not believe it. They believe in these three pictures which were here first. An organization, the Communist Organization, first took care of the political education of these people, enlisted their young enthusiasm in a cause which may not be their cause, but one that they will serve with the same faith as my Spaniards.
Indochina, 1947. Quality vs. Quantity
Of course, autonomy granted to Indochina in July 1946 did not solve the problem. Ho Chi Minh, chief of state, had been received in France with full red carpet honors. One month ago, he launched a surprise attack in Hanoi and the fight flared up again all over Indochina.
Always and everywhere the same pictures and the same slogans appear. A strange fight indeed with no apparent objectives. We French soldiers, however, know that the enemy is here. We find our friends killed in the morning, their houses burned. Ambushes destroy convoys. Soldiers are shot in the back, mines are placed on the roads and bombs blow up, here and there killing women and children. Every time we arrive, the enemy has vanished in the jungle or is mixed with the population. People do not talk. There is no intelligence. Our planes (they have none) have the absolute mastery of the skies; our navy (they have none) controls the seas; our tanks, our armament, and technical skill are unchallenged. All this material, all this military strength appears to be useless. Is this a new type of war? Not at all. Partisans have always existed. What is new is the way that we civilized people have chosen to cope with them. It is a radical departure from the rules of war. The first rule was to make fighters wear uniforms (this must have been one of the first steps of civilization) in order to save civilian population from indiscriminate massacre. When these fighters were defeated, the war was lost.
But here the Communists have changed the rules of the game. Everybody is a fighter without uniform, wearing a weapon or helping with intelligence or their silence, under penalty of death. When French soldiers appear, weapons are concealed and we get smiles. Each village is friendly or hostile depending on our strength.
In the old times, this too-simple trick could not work because the village as a whole or some hostage was held responsible for any hostile act. The Communists have noticed that our determination has vanished, our idealism prevents us from using the radical remedies which are the one and only way out, unless we use a great number of soldiers. But the third man in France will prevent our government, through public opinion, from sending adequate reinforcements. All our friends, at home and abroad, believe that we are fighting an old-style colonial war. Nobody cares to think about the fact that we have given up our old colonial policy. Time and again, Far Eastern propaganda labels us “colonialists.” The Organization plays with the idealists’ minds like a cat with a mouse. Americans in Hong Kong print papers favoring Ho Chi Minh and approving his actions. This is a blow to our enterprise, a blow to our morale. Contributions are made even in France for the heroic “resistance” of the Vietnamese people. No one knows the facts, except a handful of soldiers lost in the jungle and our democratic government, which does not use propaganda and psychological weapons as instruments for spreading the truth. We soldiers, our government, and our friends are trapped in the net of the Organization. A world-wide machinery carefully and shrewdly built, backed by the power of a great people which succeeded in defeating Hitler’s armies, is on the move and could crush us. These thoughts make heavier the hot and humid air we breathe in this deep equatorial forest. Our lonely fight, is it hopeless? We’ll fight it anyway, but how?
Our units have been organized along World War II lines. Here, the enemy has been unconventionally organized to take advantage of our tactics. Within a few weeks, we have occupied practically the whole of the Indochinese peninsula. We hold the towns, roads, harbors, and the airfields. In our G-3 offices, no classical military problems appear. In G-2, intelligence people are perplexed. We hold everything, but the enemy is everywhere. We have seen leaflets which say, “If you want to join Viet Minh, leave the highways.” But our World War II organization ties us to these roads to get fuel, ammunition, food, and supplies. If we leave the roads, our vehicles bog down in the swamps and rice fields. If we go on foot, we are lost in a terrible terrain of jungles, mountains, and forests where malaria and dysentery are the worst of our foes. In any event, we have not enough strength—barely 30,000—to mop up everything. Mop up what? Civilians?
In daylight, we succeed in keeping order, because our planes and vehicles can quickly bring infantrymen who search the jungle. Only infantry is practical. Other weapons can find no targets.
By night, however, Indochina belongs to the Viet Minh. Our night patrols are spotted when they leave the posts. Dogs bark and disclose our ambushes. “Tam-tam” calls in the jungle mark the progress of our men. The rebels know all the trees in the forest; they fight where they used to play when they were children.
The Organization has made a military entity of each village, a little theater of operations, self-efficient with its cells, its political commissar, its tax collector, and its supply system. We have discovered the “medical” organization of one village—only women. They confirm the fact that, willingly or not, everybody has a role. Even children bring messages or weapons. No modern army could cope with such a problem without using the old radical methods. We need at least 500,000 infantrymen trained for this special warfare. We have not even 50,000 and we do not play the same war game as the enemy. We never meet face to face. There is no hope of getting reinforcements. French public opinion, undermined by Communists and idealists of all kinds, will never agree to send draftees. Modern weapons can help to conquer land, but the Communists conquer people. To control land and lines of communication among hostile people who become, when necessary, hostile fighters, a considerable number of soldiers is required. As weapons systems become more and more complicated, the more they depend on sophisticated and vulnerable logistics and lines of communications. In theaters where the Organization has thrown its underground nets, quality cannot replace quantity. On the contrary, quality—which is almost useless here—requires quantity. We need soldiers and soldiers; nothing can replace the old infantry, the only one all-weather and all-terrain weapon. This is the new military challenge of Communism, whose infantry by millions is already spread all over the world.
Are not our military chiefs a little lured by the promises of scientists, and led into dangerous concepts of warfare, relying too much on machines, and forgetting men? Obviously the machines fail in this environment; they work only in daylight and when it does not rain too much. They are useful one-half of the time and over one-tenth of the terrain; the rest belongs to foot-soldiers, to numbers. The machines, of course, will always be necessary, but in themselves they will never be sufficient. Some illusions of World War II vanish in the swamps, the forests, the monsoon, and the night of Indochina.
Finally we have met the enemy entrenched to guard a mountain pass. They have built pillboxes. At last my tanks have objectives.
When the easy fight is over, we find only corpses—no prisoners, no wounded, no weapons. The survivors have fled into the forest, with their wounded and all their weapons. They do have not one rifle per soldier, only one for two or three riflemen. A cord is tied to the weapon and, if the first soldier is killed, the second man pulls on the cord and gets the gun back into his foxhole. In a pillbox hit by my tank, I find only a man’s forearm, cut off at the elbow by a shell. The man has fled. But he has left his weapon with his mangled right arm—a cross bow!
This rugged Communist infantry is courageous, too. We have underrated them. Communism, as Nazism and Fascism, provides an ideal—right or wrong—and this makes men fight. They have numbers. If they get weapons . . .
Peiping, China, 1948
They will get weapons. Chiang Kai-shek’s armies are routed around Peiping. There is no other way to escape except by air. Here in China, Mao Tse-tung, his regular armies and his underground infantry holding everything but the towns, will quickly reach the Indochina border and provide Ho Chi Minh with all the weapons necessary to arm his infantry and build a regular army. They are brothers in Communism and they fight for the same cause. Here, where one American dollar is worth one million Chinese dollars, anything seems better than the crumbling Kuomintang regime. People die of starvation in the streets of Shanghai. It is an unbelievable sight.
Obviously, China needs a revolution, so Stalin provides one. The Organization was in place, as everywhere. If it succeeds in policing and organizing these enormous crowds, a terrific manpower potential will join the Red camp—so terrific that, in the long run, Siberia could well be the only outlet.
The Organization could succeed where Sun Yat-sen and Chiang failed. The Organization attacks the very roots of society, the villages and the poor, and promotes dedicated and enthusiastic elites from humble classes, which have not yet been corrupted by power or money. In China and all over Asia, conditions are ideal—in Africa, too. One must recognize the fact that, when food is so scarce, only a strong state can distribute a little ration for everyone. Complete freedom or strong power in the hands of a dishonest class means wealth for a few and starvation for many. Communism here might be the answer. It could even be a good thing in some times and places, had not Lenin so clearly indicated that Peiping was just a step on the way to Paris, which does not need such a remedy and prefers exclusively home-made revolutions. Such statements immediately put aside all other considerations, whatever may be the intellectual seduction of the doctrine. Here, in Peiping, I am told not to wear American military clothing outside the walls of the town—I might be attacked. Have not the Americans liberated China from Japan? Yes, but anti-Americanism is the motto of Mao Tse-tung propaganda and has a strong appeal in Chinese circles still under Chiang rule. This anti-Americanism stems from the immemorial envy of the poor against the rich, of colored against white. Furthermore, Americans abroad seldom mingle with the local population. In Communist minds, colonialism and capitalism are both evils; the first is explained only by the second, which is even worse. American capitalism may fight the so-called European colonialism, but it will not buy the favors of the Communists, although it will open the way to their enterprises.
United States, 1948
This is the country which won World War II and which leads the Free World after the suicidal and stupid self-destruction of Europe. But the people here are obviously not interested in taking advantage of their strength. They are too busy at home, in this still relatively empty and generous land, to care passionately about what happens beyond their borders. I do not believe that they will realize for a long while the dangers I have seen in Asia. Here in the United States, the Organization has little chance, for reasons opposite to those favoring its expansion in overcrowded countries. To be sure Communists will always find sympathizers in intellectual circles, vulnerable to words, to all kind of dialectics—enough to build a good spy ring, but not to infiltrate the country, at least for the time being.
My Indochinese stories are listened to with courtesy, but no one believes me. They think it is just a smoke screen for concealing our traditional objectives of stupid and old-fashioned colonialism. They underrate other countries as we underrated Germany after our own World War I victory, as every victorious nation usually underrates other nations.
Excessive national pride and self-confidence nearly always results in blindness.
Aures Mountains, Algeria, 1955
Six months ago the Indochinese affair reached its logical and unhappy end. Meanwhile, the West began to awake and to take action, when Korean overt aggression could not be concealed under the guise of an anti-colonialist crusade. The West, however, did not awake to such an extent that Communist China got more than a half-hearted rebuff. This permitted the Chinese Red infantry to crow that it had succeeded in driving modern American armies from the Yalu to the 38th parallel, that the West is just a “paper tiger,” an opinion that, since June 1953, East Berlin workers must also share.
Between the fantastic red rocks of the Aures Mountains, lies a Berber village where my armored unit has been stationed since the beginning of the revolt.
This village tells the whole story of underdeveloped countries. A thousand-year-old equilibrium between natural resources (pitifully scarce in this hostile land) and population, between food and people, has been suddenly upset by modern civilization. The natural resources, during the course of centuries, had determined the number of humans. Civilization has changed this factor in the last few decades, but it could not change the birth rate in the lifespan of one or two generations. Children swarm everywhere in this Algerian village. Ten million people now live where the land can feed only three—the three million who were there originally before the recent progress of medicine started the population explosion.
Moreover, the local economy has been destroyed by the products of European industry making the native craftsmanship out of date. Last, but not least, this village school—far better than many schools in France—has brought the light of knowledge, especially the knowledge that another way of life is possible, and has fostered a hope of getting out of this rocky hell, out of this endless poverty. The radio, the press, workers, and soldiers back from France tell fascinating tales of European trips.
The only true problem of Algeria, or of Africa, or of any underdeveloped country, is the human problem. All these upheavals, these disturbances created inadvertently by civilization, can be solved only by civilization itself. The best way out is immediate and massive help, a progressive and orderly climb toward a better standard of living, and then a political system freely chosen. Our policy is nothing else, it cannot be anything else.
Another way might be the Communist system with hard labor for everybody, the same as in China, with the technical help of Russia—the Soviet Empire.
There is no third way for the time being. The Sahara desert is at the gates of this village, beyond the red ridge of rocks. It extends northward slowly, year after year, destroying the few traces of vegetation still visible here and there, in a countryside where the Romans built prosperous towns two thousand years ago. Alone, and unassisted, this little overcrowded village will quickly starve to death.
But the Organization will herd the people toward the third way as fast as possible, because they know that Moslems still dislike Communism as an atheistic doctrine. For years, the Communist paper of Algiers has advocated “Independence” for Algeria. When the Algerians themselves realize that the third way is a dead end street, they will be ripe for the second. It is only vital for Communism that the Algerians reject the first way (our way), the way of progressive independence in progressive economic growth. It is vital that as many as possible “independent” artificial and backward nations, born too early and lost in the hard struggle for economic life of the 20th century, beg their subsistence here and there. Below their first Western-educated, sometimes able and Western-minded leaders, below their first ruling classes who will have neither the moral standards nor the technical ability properly to use Western “aid without strings,” the Organization will charge “Capitalism” with all sins. It will prepare, down at the village level, the socialist revolution that these communities will inescapably need. Communist China will then be used as the example.
Here the old trick of blaming colonialism is being used again. When the revolt broke out in these mountains a few months ago, it was presented to the whole world as a nationalist and “liberation” war. Idealists take sides everywhere against us. It is a noble fight. The Communists cleverly avoid appearing directly involved. Here the leaflets do not mention “Down with Capitalism”; it is important not to awaken those idealists who have been somewhat disturbed by the recent outcome in Indochina. It is important that this revolution not be painted in red in a NATO country.
But here and in France, the Communist press does not conceal its intent. And in my area of command, I find again my old friends the commissaire politique, the tax collector, the civilian-military fighters, the network of cells, the logistical system, and the women and children enlisted. And again people lying on the road in the morning, their throats cut from one ear to the other, with an inexpressible savagery. I find the very same methods used by the Viet Minh. I see here on the spot, concealed under an anti- colonialist crusade, the hand of the Organization, leaving fingerprints everywhere. And one day, a young French Communist non-com deserts to the enemy with a truckload of weapons.
Again the old Indochinese nightmare, the lonely fight.
But here at last France has understood the importance of this last-ditch fight for Africa and Europe. We will carry the load.
The African Prospects, 1959
Already the peoples of French Africa have chosen their way. Most of them rely on progressive emancipation under European guidance. But Tunisia, Morocco, and Guinea have taken the most heroic and most spectacular path of immediate and complete independence. They did so at the very moment when France, Germany, and other modern nations, including the United States, began to give up the isolationist independence concept outdated by the atomic age. They did so because some uninformed Western idealists encouraged them to break away from the environment where the concept was born and had developed. These idealists, at the same time, wisely urged the great nations of Europe to unite, in order to face the military and economic needs of the future. And these newcomers immediately started to blackmail East and West to get their subsistence, after the massive desertion of private capital which does not rely on slogans and banners.
Within a few years, the Moslem world, said to be “impenetrable for Communists,” has been infiltrated from Baghdad to Marrakech. The crumbling economy of Morocco, for instance, is an ideal terrain where the progress of the Organization, along its preplanned patterns, is under way. Actually, some form of socialism is probably the only solution in such countries. But this acknowledgement could lure them, like Communist China, right into the nets of the U.S.S.R., which unfortunately now appears to too many people as the only disinterested and progressive power.
Why does this amazing myth work? Why does the light of liberty appear so bright to so many uncommitted peoples only in the East? Simply because the Organization, strangely enough, has found an unexpected and powerful ally—the Western camp itself! When they present European colonialism as the roadblock preventing the progress of Africans to political freedom (which is false) they find that America, or some Americans, agree with them. When they present U. S. capitalism as the roadblock to social improvement (which is false), they find that Europe or some Europeans agree with them. Why should the natives rely on the inconsistent West instead?
And whatever might be the official policy of Western governments, the Organization will always find in the Western free press enough articles to feed all its propaganda against the West itself.
Moreover the Organization is technically unsurpassed in the diffusion of psychological poison. It knows that backward people who can read generally believe what they read. The Communist newspaper was the only one in Algeria that could reach the most remote village.
This is the tragedy of our West, the tragedy of the democracies. In Africa, as in Asia ten years ago, some Western idealists are busy sawing off the roots of the Western tree; these people, unconsciously, are the best agents for the Organization.
The present and desperate Western haste to deny to the Soviets the psychological initiative in the field of political progress also serves the enemy’s purpose.
Independence has been given in fact to a small oligarchy of educated people, to the upper and richer class of a native society. What can they do, with the loss of private capital, without technicians, without training, sometimes without morality, to improve their economy and the plight of the masses? In Africa the brutal end of colonialism—the achievements of which are unduly forgotten—will give all the power to such people. This policy will sell the natives, barely out of the stone age, to a middle-age economic feudalism. The new ruling class, jealous of its independence, will get help from the outside “without control.” Unfortunately, past experience shows that very often this policy means Cadillacs for government officials and nothing for the welfare of the masses.
Here Communism benefits indirectly from the Western aid.
Everyone is familiar with these things. None of the nations in history was born overnight; a political entity should be based on a certain amount of economic independence, which requires time and controlled guidance.
Why then does the West continue to make such mistakes? Is it not contrary to the real interest of the natives? Do we let children get all they want before they are adults? Why does the West sometimes seem more eager to give “liberty” to negro cannibals than to captive Hungarians? Because it is easier? Because they are colored? Sometimes, the appeasement of colored and loud-crying people to their own future detriment and to the ultimate benefit of Communism appears to be the main preoccupation of some Western diplomats.
The right of people to self determination (which fortunately was not allowed the South during the American Civil War) should not be the right of some students to determine the fate of peoples, not at least before these peoples are sufficiently educated to understand what they are doing when they go to the polls.
Human nature has not changed sufficiently in recent years to justify such a departure from the line of conduct which has spread civilization through history.
The U.S.S.R. pursues its objective with an iron will and a strong determination, regardless of votes in the United Nations. People being what they are, the U.S.S.R. could win, and people always cheer the winners . . . and despise the weak, despise the losers, whatever their good will, their good faith, or the value of their cause. All the idealists should sometimes leave their desks, their pens, and their clouds, lose themselves in a crowd, and listen. They would quickly learn this truth as old as the world.
The worst result of the present misunderstanding between Western allies about “colonial” affairs could be a collapse of the Alliance. The Organization, which does everything to wreck European influence in Africa, is at the same time busy explaining, very carefully, to Europe that the United States wants only to expel all competitors from prospective markets “as in Indochina.” This insidious argument makes some people say, “If we had been allied with the U.S.S.R., we would not have lost our empire.” This is probably true, but we would have lost our liberty. A fissure is already visible between Europe and the United States, and the Organization will try to widen it by any means, with all its skill and strength. The danger is immense and imminent. At stake is the future of Africa—now on its way to Communism—and the fate of the Western Alliance.
Norfolk, November 1959
I have just read in the papers that a party of Guinean students left recently for Moscow.
A well-informed friend from France told me, here in Norfolk, that numerous envoys of Communist China (which was visited recently by Algerian rebel chiefs) are now in Tunisia and Morocco. In this latter country, several hundred Chinese vanished in the mountains. “We do not know why. . . . It is a matter of guess.”
If this information is true, I know the answer. I got it, 16 years ago, not far from Morocco, in a Spanish jail beyond the straits of Gibraltar.
IV. CONCLUSION
In this article, I have described frankly what I have seen and what I believe. It might appear to be somewhat exaggerated, did not the magnitude of our decline in 15 years require some radical explanations.
Today, the totalitarian organization of the U.S.S.R., far beyond Hitler’s material strength and short-sighted doctrine, threatens the world with arms, and meanwhile conquers the mind with a universal doctrine. The Communists are clever and courageous, dedicated and strong. They have numbers and leadership. To what extent, and how long the unnatural Red doctrine and the Communist solidarity around the world will overcome the natural trends of men and the natural differences between peoples it intends to tie together, is a matter of conjecture. Many indulge in thinking that fissures in the Red Bloc could, sooner or later, lessen its monolithic strength, and they believe that the Soviet empire will meet the fate of earlier empires—vanquished by their own conquests.
This might be true in the long run. But, for the time being—the time in which we live—Russian achievements in technology certainly have not lessened their universal appeal or their military strength. And there is no reason why their determination to carry on their proclaimed objective should diminish. Wishful thinking of this type could be the worst danger and the spreading of this belief one of the most clever moves of the Organization.
The sad truth is that the West has almost lost Asia and is in bad shape in Africa. Nor does Latin America look very promising—all this without the Soviets firing a single shot. NATO itself is threatened with dissolution, through mutual incomprehension and ignorance. All the Allies are partly to blame in this general Western bungling.
Our cause deserves to win, however, and has all the means, material and psychological, but up to now, apparently possesses neither the will nor the skill.
Our strategy has been built against the air, land, and sea power of the U.S.S.R., to fight a three-dimensional war. It has the efficiency of a bandage on a malignant tumor, because the war has a fourth dimension. This fourth dimension does not appear on the military maps, it cannot appear, but it is visible in the streets, in the villages, in the houses, and in the farthest corner of the world that can be reached by press or radio.
The Reds have understood the problem. They have devised their political and military machinery to attack on this ground, and they push their advantages relentlessly and without shame. Practically, up to now, they have even been able to play one Western ally against the other. This is the basic reason for our unbelievable decline.
The answer is the key to their own successes, of the initial successes of totalitarian states against democracies—teamwork, determination, and purpose.
Teamwork, determination, and purpose in that fourth dimension where the war is going on means, to begin with, political agreement and unity of action on Asian, African, and other issues. It should mean, one day, some kind of political unity in the West.
Teamwork, determination, and purpose are vital, too, in the classical military field, where no one of the Allies can get by itself quantity plus quality, of which our enemy has more and more. This requires a progressive integration of the Western forces. We military should push hard for this cause, which could promote later political unity. In that respect, the Soviet threat has a constructive side; people unite only against something, and the need to unite is written in the future, regardless of present dangers. Stalin started the unity of Europe; unity of the West could be Khrushchev’s gift. This is a cause worth fighting for.
The road is long; national pride and hidebound selfishness are the main roadblocks. But this ideal might be the only one that could match, down at the village level, the universal appeal of Communism—the danger from below.
These ideas are not new, but the conviction they translate stems from observing those average people, friends or foes, or still uncommitted, in whose minds the battles of World War III have already begun.
Our common future depends on the outcome of this fight. Victory can be on our side only if we fight with courage and unity.
Educated at France’s military college of Saint Cyr, Lieutenant Colonel Geneste escaped to Spain from Nazi-occupied France and joined the Free French Forces. Subsequently, he served with the 2nd French armored Division, 3rd American Army. After World War II, he took part in the Indochina campaign and from 1951-57 he served in Algeria. In 1959-60, he attended the Armed Forces Staff College, Norfolk, Virginia. At present, Lieutenant Colonel Geneste is an instructor in the École Suptrieure de Guerre, Paris, France.
1. This article was written in Norfolk, Va., in October, 1959.