copying De Gaulle's strategy on Algeria, lulling the hawks with promises of honor only to cut and run when the moment appeared ripe. It isn't inconceivable, and Nixon does fancy De Gaulle's style, but it seems quite out of character, politically as well as personally, since it would force the President to rely on the support of the left against the predictable outrage of the right. If the policy is what the Administration says it is, then its chance of working depends on the ability of Asian states to achieve that mutual reinforcement within the time period set by dwindling U.S. patience. The deadline can't be fixed; it depends in turn on whether Asian countries are seen to be making enough progress to renew U.S. patience, as well as on the trials of America's domestic life. Yet there can't be much doubt that a historic deadline does exist not many years away. A vice-minister in one worried government figured there were three to four years to go. Others hope for a little more or fear a little less, according to whether "we show we're able to use the time," as a leader in Singapore put it.

But every Asian I talked to, from consistent critics of the United States to consistent apple-polishers (but excluding avowed Communist supporters), was convinced that disaster is bound to follow if a deadline is fixed and the United States suddenly decamps from the Far East.

"We don't want you to be so frustrated that you want to withdraw abruptly and forget about Asia," said a Japanese of high rank. "There should be a return to normal, and normal means a substantial U.S. presence in Asia. In our opinion, your presence is beneficent to almost everyone in the area. It is in our interest to encourage it." A former Southeast Asian leader, one who never approved America's plunge into Asia's politics and battles, said tartly, "You are too unpredictable. First you try to line everybody up behind you, and then you want to pull out and leave us to face the consequences on our own. Everyone will be angry at you now. What do you expect?"

These attitudes by no means denote affection for the United States, nor even a sense of common destiny with America such as permeated European thought in the 50s (to the discomfort of a number of Europeans). They come from a sense of weakness, of fragility of institutions and even nations in a region facing vast transition. The lines of conflict criss-cross the area. Instability is inherent at this stage, not only within societies but among countries.

The policy of collective security and mutual aid worked in Europe because the Europeans were ready to work together. It was a thousand years— from Charlemagne to Jean Monnet-before people in Western Europe came to the conclusion that their common interests were greater than their hostilities. Even after World War II, it took fear of the Soviet Union to consolidate the European coalition and push it on until it gained its own momentum. Nothing like that has happened in Asia. Before World War II, there were but three independent countries-China, Japan, and Thailand. Decolonization was completed scarcely a decade ago. Nothing in the colonial period prepared countries to cooperate with their neighobrs. The ties were all to the imperial metropolis. As they emerge now as nation-states, and impoverished, struggling ones at that, there is little to give Asians a feeling of regional community as a buttress against their separate fears.

TROUBLES TO SHARE

"Asking Asians to help Asians is like asking a bunch of paupers to form a corporation," sniffed one. "We have nothing to share but our troubles." (With few exceptions, no leading officials wanted to be named as critics or doubters of the Nixon Doctrine. Presumably they don't yet know enough of Nixon's intentions to risk saying publicly where they stand.)

"Nothing to share" is an exaggeration. There are a number of regional groups, and they are performing some useful functions in financing development, promoting trade, even a cautious amount of political coordinating. SEATO, the only military alliance, is a facade, however, a diaphanous cover for direct links to the United States. Even Australia makes no pretense that its involvement in SEATO, and especially its participation in the Vietnam War, was done for any reason but to assure America's continued commitment to Australia.

It isn't an exaggeration, though, to see in the remark a measure of the

confidence Asian states have in each other. Quite apart from ideology, almost all of them have old, unresolved quarrels with their neighbors. They don't trust and don't much like each other. If they must ask somebody to come and help, they would far prefer us round-eyes to their neighbors however much they may dislike Westerners. Cambodia, judging from the past, expected large-scale U.S. military help when it went to war. Now, in their desperation, Cambodians are welcoming military help from South Vietnam and seeking it from Thailand, but their distaste is staggering.

Economic backwardness is another crucial difference impeding Asian cooperation. The mercantilists, and in their turn the Marxists, were wrong about the real magnetic lines of trade. They are strongest among industrialized countries, not between the haves and the have-nots, and certainly not among the havenots who have little use for each other's raw materials.

The most important economic advance in Asia, outside of Japan, is turning out to depress rather than encourage regional trade. That is the "green revolution," the spectacular increase in agricultural yields due to new techniques. As a result, even food is losing its assured market. Traditional rice exporters such as Thailand are having a hard time selling because the usual buyers are growing more at home. Faced with a bad trade deficit, the Thais have imposed stiff new taxes to discourage imports. There is already resentment among suppliers to Thailand, and retaliation is certain to follow.

Thus, while "Asians helping Asians" sets off pleasing political vibrations, especially to U.S. taxpayers, there is really no political or economic base for it on a significant scale. It may well come some day, but probably decades, maybe generations, will pass before there can be any realistic expectation of an Asian bloc with sufficient cohesion and collective strength to deal on anything like even terms with the Chinese giant. For a long time ahead, the countries will remain a collection of midgets unable, and basically unwilling, to pool what strength they have.

China-vast, overwhelming, hugely present throughout the region even at the peak of its self-imposed quarantine is the one factor pressing other Asian to awareness that they have some common interests. But it has operated in a quite different way from Soviet pressure on Europe.

DO-IT-YOURSELF

Partly, that must be credited to Mao's shrewdness. He has understood the force of nationalism as Stalin and his successors never did. Instead of trying to suppress nationalism in Asia to make room for Peking's hegemony, Moscowstyle, Peking is prepared to encourage it as an ally of revolution. Partly, also, the Mao doctrine of do-it-yourself revolution with maximum encouragement but minimum material succor from Peking is a reflection of China's weakness. As the Japanese point out mainland China, with eight times as many people, has less than half ($69 billion) the gross national product of Japan ($160 billion). Japanese projections, based on careful study and the best information about China available anywhere, are that this ratio will fall to less than a third by 1975 (China-$100 billion; Japan-$350 to $400 billion) vastly increasing the disproportion in growth as well as total capacity. There is a wide range of assessments of the "China threat" among the various countries of the region. Only the Chinese Nationalist government on Taiwan expresses its fears in terms of massive invasion. The others view the danger on a scale which reaches from Japan's comfortable assumption that physical security is the least of the problems China poses, though Thailand's fear of insurgency nourished by Peking, to South Korea's fear of direct attack by North Korea with China backing up Pyongyang.

American military men throughout Asia persist in concentrating on China as a military threat. Almost nobody else, including the more astute American diplomats, perceive the situation in those terms. China does have the ability to exert great pressure. But it exerts primarily political and social pressure on the shaky underpinnings of flimsy regimes groping slowly and, for the most part, with woeful ineffectiveness and error, to modernize their societies. China certainly affects every country in its neighborhood, but it simply is not the catalyst for a coalition of resistance that the Soviet Union became in Europe.

Not surprisingly, the only capital where one hears even mildy serious talk of organizing collective defense against China is Taipei. The Chinese Nationalists are, after all, Chinese and continue to think in grand, continental terms. They complain that until the Nixon Doctrine, Washington actively discouraged real efforts at Asian military cooperation in favor of bilateral ties which it could more easily control, Now, though admittedly wistfully, the Chinese Nationalists talk about a South Korea-Taiwan-South Vietnam-Thailand grouping which they point out would add up to an impressive armed force of two million men. It isn't even likely enough to be worth listing the obstacles and difficulties to overcome before such a coalition, if not a formal alliance, could get started.

JAPAN'S SOFT STEP

Outside of Japan, then, there is neither the way nor the will for Asians to take over execution of Ameircan policy in Asia by helping each other and relieving the United States. Basically, the Administration knows this, and it counts heavily on prodding Japan to take up the task of acting as coalition nucleus. There is something in it, but less than enthusiasts in Washington have advertised.

First, Japan is far from convinced that American policy is based on a sound judgment of what really threatens stability in Asia. Secondly, Japan is rearming and emerging from its post-war period of looking totally inward, though not so fast as the United States seeks. It is moving with great caution toward decisions on just what the responsibilities of an Asian power should be and how Japan should exercise them. It is prepared to expand its foreign aid and development effort. It is beginning to accept some political tasks, but its statesmen think in terms of mediation, not regional leadership. Significantly, even Japan's willingness to mediate is directed to quarrels such as that between the Philippines and Malaysia over Sabah, or perhaps between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, or the possibility of a dispute between Singapore and Indonesia, providing the parties ask Japan to get involved. Note that these are classic territorial disputes, in no case involving ideology and big power conflict.

Japan is not prepared to offer military support abroad, even through the sale of weapons, let alone dispatch of men, forbidden by its constitution. Top U.S. officials dream of inveigling the Japanese into an important role in any international peace-keeping force sent to Indochina to guarantee a future settlement. Maybe, maybe not. There are too many unanswerable questions of circumstance. At any rate, with the Nixon Doctrine the United States is trying to push Japan into exercising big power influence faster and further than Japan wants to go, or than the other Asian countries can comfortably countenance. This isn't likely to work, and if it does, it is almost certainly unwise.

Japan, of course, must now be included in the list of Asian powers. There are four-the United States, the Soviet Union, China, and Japan. Their roles and relations are shifting, but any consideration of power balance in the area now requires that one take account of all four. The Soviet Union particularly has been expanding its presence, and its claim to vested interest, with relentless energy. Looking westward from the Far East, it is easy to understand how urgently Moscow wants the Suez Canal reopened and to find reasons for Soviet Middle East policy which are far less apparent when one looks eastward from Washington.

It is not so easy to calculate the major Soviet goal in the Far East. Is it essentially a defensive effort to cordon China, or a drive for hegemony? Japanese Foreign Minister Aichi, a canny man, told me candidly that he simply had no answer to the question of probable Soviet intentions because they aren't yet at all clear.

Each of these four powers, in any case, has its own national interest in Asia. Some conflict directly, some are parallel, none fully coincide. Together, the four constitute the framework within which Asia will develop during the next generation, and it is that framework which will determine whether there is a chance for orderly and peaceful transition ora near certainty of violent upheaval. That is what Japanese officials mean when they speak of the need for "normal American presence" in the area. Sudden removal of the United States from the equation would destroy all hope of balance.

CONTRADICTION

If this analysis is correct, the outcome is contradiction. The Nixon Doctrine requires a very substantial dispatch of American men and money to Asia for a long period ahead, because the Asians simply can't make it work in a short time. The Nixon Doctrine also requires very substantial reduction of U.S. men and money being sent to Asia in a short time, because Americans will not (and should not) keep up such a heavy flow much longer.

The contradiction threatens failure of the policy, a very grave danger for both Asia and the United States. Not the least of the risks of failure is a revulsion in America so intense that it will produce the kind of isolationism which excluded the United States from Europe between 1918 and 1939. Only after a second world war began did this country recognize how much it was menaced by the disorders of Europe.

My conclusion is that our policy will have to change, or evolve quite differently from what seems the present direction. Instead of trying to get non-Communist Asians together to replace American counterpressure to China, which we can't do, U.S. policy should be to encourage each country to seek its own gradual accommodation with Peking.

That is not possible so long as the Indochina war continues. Nor is there the slightest prospect that the war can be ended so long as the United States is involved for the indefinite future. It is one more argument, added to the many others, for fixing a date for the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam.

The other key obstacle is U.S. recognition of the Nationalists on Taiwan as the government of China. There is fortunately a solution for this problem which, rare in international politics, combines practicality, morality, and selfinterest all at once. That is to help arrange, perhaps through international auspices, a referendum on Taiwan. The result can be predicted with full confidence. The Taiwanese would vote overwhelmingly for independence from any government of China, real or pretending. Then the United States could recognize the sovereign state of Taiwan and work, as circumstance allows, to negotiate relations with China itself. This solution would not please Peking. But if Taiwan were also neutralized on lines of what the Japanese call "the Austrian solution," it would, together with withdrawal from Vietnam, demonstrate conclusively that the remaining U.S. presence in Asia is a balancing factor and in no way a threat to China. No one can foresee Peking's evolution. But it can be influenced as all countries, including the mightiest, are influenced by possibilities offered, ambitions accommodated or balked, and roads opened for maneuver, or shut off.

If the United States shifted from its policy of "counterforce to China" and removed what Peking can legitimately regard as an American threat along its borders, it could then give economic and political support to countries resisting Peking's efforts to foment upheaval without making their relations with China impossible. This policy also offers the eventual hope of inducing China to see its own best interests in accommodation with, instead of hegemony over, Asian countries following a different ideological path to modernity. An Asian Great Wall against China offers nothing but strife, and anyway it can't be built by shipping U.S. bricks to Asian contractors and telling them to get on with the job.

The real problems of Asia are not military but political, social, economic. Arms and alliances, as Vietnam has shown, cannot solve these problems. It is still possible for the Nixon Doctrine to be transformed into a policy of support for Asian countries which are trying to come to terms with China. These countries need an American policy which will safeguard their own efforts to develop, rather than a policy of countercoalition designed principally to reduce the cost of conflict for America.

It is possible, but it hasn't begun, and there isn't much time. That American deadline is not yet marked on the calendar, but it exists.

Chairman PROXMIRE. In addition to your analysis of the effect of our military assistance program, that is that it seems to be, it could be, militarizing our foreign policy, and the very serious questions you raise about the wisdom of this kind of military assistance to

countries like Spain and Greece and the way we have been providing it, and the other implications with respect to foreign policy, it seems to me two striking facts emerge from your testimony. The first is the incredible sums going into military assistance, amounts that neither the Congress nor the general public have been aware of. And, second, is the fact that under the present arrangements much of the money involved appears to require no authorization and much that does go before Authorization Committees has been diverted away from the Foreign Relations Committee.

In your opinion, has the Government intentionally concealed the true size of the military assistance program, and, if so, for what purpose?

Senator FULBRIGHT. Well, Mr. Chairman, it is always a very delicate matter to bring up the subject of motives.

Many of these programs have grown up like Topsy. Take the excess military equipment program. It is a little like Public Law 480 except that we do not get anything from the foreign country in return. They develop these excesses when they want a way to get rid of themit is a way to get new equipment and to replenish their funds. I am not sure I would say their intention was to deceive the Congress. Because this didn't require the usual examination and the limitations, the effect was there regardless of what their motive was. I suppose the principal motive was a way to get rid of older material which was still plenty good for small, poor developing countries and to replenish their funds.

Chairman PROXMIRE. I am not asking whether they were doing this for some purpose which we wouldn't approve. I am asking whether they have concealed the size of the military assistance program, in effect.

Senator FULBRIGHT. Well, if you leave out the word "intention," I think there has been concealment, and it has been extremely difficult in many cases to uncover the full implications of some of the agree

ments.

I mentioned the Spanish-base agreement. This was an executive agreement first in 1953, renewed in 1963, and recently renewed again. The Subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee under the chairmanship of Senator Symington went into this at considerable depth with two very able staff members. We had great difficulty, I may say, in obtaining the information as to what was involved in this secret executive agreement and the directions given by General Wheeler to his negotiator, General Burchinal. These were secret matters, and they objected strenuously in the beginning to our obtaining the information. It took a good deal of persuasion and argument to obtain this material. In this sense they did not wish it to be publicized and, as you know, even though we were as strong as we could be in insisting it be brought forward as a treaty, they refused to do it. It is still an executive agreement. However, the terms of it were not before known and have now been revealed. But there is a tendency to classify everything that might be embarrasing, that raises these difficult questions when brought to light. We have had considerable difficulty with this entire issue of security classification by the executive branch.

If you will look at some of the published hearings of that subcommittee there are an enormous amount of deletions. Most of those dele