SKANDINAVISKT ANTIKOMMUNISTISKT SAMARBETE UNDER VIETNAMKRIGET 1963 – 1975

År 1962 grundades den danska landsorganisationen Demokratisk Alliance (DA). Den vände sig främst till borgerliga antikommunister och hade till ursprungligt syfte att motarbeta Kampagnen mod Atomvåben som ett instrument för kommunistisk agitation mot USA och Danmarks NATO-medlemskap. Organisationens först aktioner kom dock att vända sig mot Nikita Chrusjtjovs besök i Danmark. Medlemmar av DA deltog våren 1964 i en antikommunistisk konferens i Lund organiserad av Inform – fri politisk informationstjänst, som bildats för att motverka och informera om kommunistisk undergrävande verksamhet i Sverige. Vid konferensen diskuterades bland annat internationellt samarbete i protesterna mot den ryske diktatorns besök sommaren 1964 i de skandinaviska länderna.

DA nådde snart ett landsomfattande medlemskap av ca 1 250. Från 1965 kom organisationen att engagera sig i den allt intensivare Vietnamdebatten. Från vänstersidan inleddes då en kampanj med telefonhot mot medlemmar av DA, i vilken bland annat ingick dödshot. 1970 upprättade Sydvietnam ett informationskontor i Köpenhamn där två ledande medlemmar av DA anställdes (redaktören Henning Jensen och Valter Loll).

I november 1965 bildades i Sverige Kommittén för ett Fritt Asien (KFA) med juristen och författaren Bertil Häggman (f. 1940) som ordförande. Syftet var att verka för en allsidig och objektiv information om Asien. Samtidigt som KFA stödde fria, icke kommunistiska stater i världsdelen ville man studera kommunistisk strategi, taktik och politik. Informationsarbetet kom främst att inriktas på det kommunistiska hotet mot Sydvietnam men avsåg också kommunistisk gerillastrategi i länder som till exempel Thailand och kommunistkinesisk politik i det ockuperade Tibet. Att väcka intresse för och ge understöd till studiet av asiatiska problem i ingick i KFA:s arbete och man önskade också medverka och uppmuntra till besök i Skandinavien av representanter för de fria staterna i Asien.

DA och KFA samarbetade med Komiteen for Sydøstasia (KSA) som bildades 1966 i Norge. Den var en föregångare till Norsk-Vietnamesisk Forbund (NVF), som grundades 1970. NVF arbetade bland annat med adoptioner från Vietnam till Norge. Ledande norska aktörer var bland annat Torbjørn Jelstad (1941 – 2006) och Per Flatabø.

Representanter för DA, KFA och KSA låg bakom inbjudan till den sydvietnamesiske ministern Tran Van An att besöka Skandinavien i november 1966. Världsinbördeskriget har tidigare skildrat de våldsamma vänsterextremistiska reaktionerna vid ministerns besök i Sverige och Danmark.

Som en följd av besöket kom under sommaren 1967 representanter för de tre organisationerna att inbjudas till Sydvietnam för ett studiebesök. Vid detta besök gavs rika tillfällen att i sydvietnamesiska media förklara varför vänsterextremister i de skandinaviska länderna kommit att dominera opinionsbildningen beträffande kriget i Sydöstasien.

Under den senare fasen av kriget i början av 1970-talet samarbetade KFA med det sydvietnamesiska informationskontoret i Stockholm. Ordföranden i KFA:s avdelning för norra Sverige, Göran Morander, publicerade 1972 boken FNL – terror eller befrielse? En studie av Sydvietnams Nationella Befrielsefront, dess historik, organisation, teknik och politik (Studentlitteratur, Lund). Morander konstaterade i sin undersökning att FNL i huvudsak var ett instrument för nordvietnamesisk aggression i Sydvietnam. Författaren kunde efter ett par rundresor i det sovjetiskt ockuperade Östeuropa dra slutsatsen att hyllningarna av FNL var mer intensiva i Sverige än i de kommunistiska staterna.

I den (opublicerade) artikeln ”Motståndskamp på kommunistiskt territorium” (1985) kunde Bertil Häggman konstatera att det verkliga befrielsekriget, det mot kommunistiskt förtryck, hade inletts. Han nämnde i artikeln den norske utrikesexperten och journalisten Frank Bjerkholts bok Vietnam – det store bedraget (1980). Den boken ingick i den omvärdering av Vietnamkriget, som ägde rum ibland annat USA och Frankrike men också i Norge i början av 1980-talet.

I april 1980 hade den Förenade nationella fronten för Vietnams befrielse (NUFLVN) bildats av exilvietnameser i Förenta Staterna. I frontens program lovades kamp mot rysk imperialism och för frihet och välfärd för det vietnamesiska folket i ett demokratiskt Vietnam. Våren 1984 inledde fronten radiosändningar från thailändskt territorium (Vietnamesisk motståndsradio). Ledare för NUFLVN var den sydvietnamesiske amiralen Hoang Co Minh (1935 – 1987). 1982 hade amiralen bildat Vietnamesiska reformpartiet (Viet Tan). Nuvarande partiledare är Do Hoang Diem.

Över 40 år efter det att totalitärt styre inrättades i hela Vietnam fortsätter arbetet för ett demokratiskt Vietnam av Viet Tan och andra partier i exil. Deras arbete är en fortsättning på Sydvietnams motståndskamp 1954 till 1975 mot kommunismen.

WESTERN CIVILIZATION – COLLAPSE OR RECOVERY

On May 18, 2006, Richard Koch and Chris Smith wrote about their book Suicide of the West in Financial Times, London. Excerpts below:

In 1900, most Westerners were confident and optimistic, full of pride about their civilization. Since then, the West has made enormous strides in economic, scientific, military, political and social terms. Yet the earlier confidence has gone. We have stopped believing in the ideas that drove earlier generations to improve the world.

Six main ideas made the West, century after century, progressively successful, powerful, and attractive – Christianity, optimism, science, economic growth, individualism and liberalism.

Christianity: Christianity transformed the West. It was the world’s first individualised, activist, self-help movement. Ordinary people were encouraged to clean up their act and given God’s help to do so. Everyone had a “soul”; individual human dignity and responsibility were greatly enhanced.

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Optimism: the importance of optimism in driving success – of individuals, of whole civilizations – has been greatly overlooked. Optimism comes from three Greek and Christian “myths” – the myth of autonomy, the myth of progress and the myth of human goodness. Creation is ultimately good.

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After 1760, our stories began to feature bad heroes – egotistical people, amoral or immoral. The last century confirmed a dim view of human nature – Freud’s ideas, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, two world wars, horrific and hateful societies. A diminished view of people facilitated these horrors.

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Science: science is pre-eminently Western. It arose through belief in a perfect, rational Creator, and in our ability to figure out the perfect universe that God created.

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Growth: the West’s stunning economic advance over the past 1,000 years, and especially the last 200 years, has made mankind a …success and the West dominant. Victories over hunger and disease are unprecedented.

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Individualism: this has always been the West’s most striking characteristic. Now many inside the West are worried by individualism. Our highly atomistic society makes it easy to feel a failure.

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If we do not demand truly responsible individualism, from our leaders, role models and ourselves, our civilization will disintegrate.

Liberalism: the greatest threat to the West comes from [classical] liberalism’s decline … Also from the “ultra-liberals”, the relativists who see nothing special about Western liberal society, who deny personal responsibility and incubate the “victim mentality”.

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Western civilization has reached a fork in the road…[The West needs] a recovery of nerve, confidence in ourselves and our culture, unity within and between America and Europe, a society of individuals held together by self-improvement, striving, optimism, reason, compassion, equality and mutual identity. The road chosen will determine whether our civilization collapses or reaches its destiny.

Richard Koch, an author, and Lord Smith, former UK culture secretary, are co-authors of Suicide of the West (Continuum, 2006).

Comment: There is much of interest in the Koch-Smith book but they do not agree with James Burnham (1905 – 1987) in their conclusions. In his book Suicide of the West Burnham focused on the intangible, often vague leftist doctrine that is dominating Western civilization.

Long after Burnham’s death the suicidal tendencies of the West have increased greatly, especially in the last eight years. The first edition of Burnham’s book was published in 1964. It was republished in 2014.

There is no lack of resources or military power in the West, said Burnham, but there is an erosion of intellectual, moral, and spiritual factors in modern Western society represented by the liberal left. It represents the ideology of Western suicide. It can be argued that civilization is not about military might. It is true but without bases, posts, and soldiers there can be no civilization, there is nothing. The lines of defense are the limes also of civilization. Left liberalism has a way of comforting us in our afflictions. It transmutes the dark defeats, the withdrawals and catastrophes into their bright opposites: into gains, victories, advances. The geographic, political, demographic and strategic losses emerge as triumphs of Freedom, Equality, Progress and Virtue.

Burnham wrote during the Cold War but his views continue to be accurate. At present the liberal leftist leaders are telling us that we should not be troubled by the attacks of Islamic terrorists. These terrorists are on the run, they say, although the West is not using its full military resources to defeat them. Both the Russian, Chinese and Iranian empires are challenging the West, but the liberal leftist leaders assure us that all is well and appeasement works if we only accept peaceful coexistence with these empires. When the final defeat of the West comes the liberal leftist leaders will declare that Mankind as a whole is joining in a utopian universal civilization that has risen above distinctions and divisions of the past. It is in truth, they would declare, eternal peace and happiness.

EUROPE’S ENDLESS TERROR– A SIGN OF DECLINE OF THE WEST

nationalinterest.org has an interesting article by Robert W. Merry in which he is making some important comments about the West and Islam. Excerpts below:

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[Many Muslims in Europe] despise the West as a morally inferior civilization that has, however, dominated many lands of Islam through a superior technology of warfare.

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“The underlying problem for the West,” wrote Huntington, “is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power. The problem for Islam is that the West, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the universality of their culture and believe that their superior, if declining, power imposes on them the obligation to extend that culture throughout the world.”

Huntington also wrote, “Some Westerners . . . have argued that the West does not have problems with Islam but only with violent Islamist extremists. Fourteen hundred years of history demonstrate otherwise.”

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There is a natural tension between the West and Islam that has always been there.

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“The preservation of the United States and the West,” Huntington wrote, “requires the renewal of Western identity. The security of the world requires acceptance of global multiculturality.” In other words, domestic multiculturalism erodes America’s ability to preserve its identity. And global universalism exacerbates civilizational tensions unnecessarily. And yet that precisely is what America has been pursuing—domestic multiculturalism and global universalism. This can’t possibly work.

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The Muslim population of France is about 7.5 percent, a critical mass that threatens ongoing domestic strife within that country. The renewal of Western cultural identity urged by Huntington won’t come easily there. Our hearts must go out to the entire country in the wake of episodes of mass murder like the truck attack in Nice on July 14, 2016.

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The Muslim population of American, by contrast, is about 1 percent, though Muslims make up about 10 percent of ongoing legal immigration and differential birthrates will boost that population segment in coming years. The question for America is whether it should seek to craft immigration policies designed to prevent America from facing the challenge now confronting France. It’s a question that most Americans clearly don’t want to face, as reflected in the reaction to Trump’s suggestion of a temporary halt to Muslim immigration. But, if the trend lines of violence continue along their current trajectory, here and throughout the West, political sensibilities on the issue could change.

Robert W. Merry is a contributing editor at the National Interest and an author of books on American history and foreign policy.

Comment: Merry brings up a fundamental question in his article invoking Huntington’s clash of civilizations theory. There are many challenges today to the declining West.

It is important first to remember that there are many distinct cultures within Islamic civilization. The main challenge to the West is coming from the Arab subcivilization. The Iranian empire (former Persia) is the breeding ground for hatred against the West. Iran is a strong supporter of terrorist groups that attack the West. The Turkic and Malay subcivilizations of Islam have so far not turned against the West although there are Islamic terrorist groups in Central Asia. Muslim terror groups exist in for instance countries like the Philippines and Indonesia but their activities so far do not constitute a civilizational clash with the West. For centuries, however, there was a clash in Europe with Islam and a serious military Islamic threat to what was the the Western heartland.

The declining West has many more challengers than the Arab subcivilization. Other challengers are the Russian and Chinese empires. The main question is if the West will be capable of stopping and reversing internal decay, the inner challenge?

According to American macro-historian Carroll Quigley in The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) this is questionable:

Western civilization existed in full flower about A.D. 1500, and will surely pass out of existence at some time in the future, perhaps before A.D. 2500.

THE TERROR WAR IS AIMED AT THE WEST AND IT HAS TO FIGHT BACK

Fox News on July 15, 2016, published a commentary by James Jay Carafano on the recent Nice terror attack and the terror war on the West. Excerpts below:

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Many nations have suffered…attacks meant not just to produce mass casualties but to maximize confusion, fear and disruption. Belgium, the United States, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Turkey and, now again, France have all experienced shocking, numbing violence. The attacks have become so common, the days themselves are no longer marked as special like 9/11 and 7/7.

What is indisputable is what this campaign of global violence is: terrorism.

That there is no universal legal definition of terrorism is no real obstacle to giving evil a name. What makes these attacks uniquely heinous and despicable is clear. Terrorism is the use or threat of violence, for a political purpose, against innocents.

…when people war against humanity, it is our fight to stop them, punish them, finish them.

There is a problem with how the war has been fought the last eight years. Our leaders in Washington redefined the enemy, arguing if the terrorism wasn’t aimed at us it wasn’t our problem. Many of our allies did likewise. This indifference opened the space for the current wave of transnational terrorism to fester and then explode.

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The free world is long past wake-up calls, red flags, game changers, and new threats. The West is in the middle of a war it doesn’t want. And the longer the West watches while the global Islamist insurgency surges on, the more terrorism shifts from an inconceivable, unacceptable horror to the banality of evil.

To not fight a just war against Islamist transnational terrorism is to allow evil to chip away at the sanctity of humanity.

Now the Obama administration will hold a summit of foreign ministers in Washington to discuss battling ISIS. It’s awfully late in the game for that, but this is an administration that has tried to win a war by ignoring it.

That’s not how war works…It’s aimed at us. And we must fight back.

James Jay Carafano is vice president of foreign and defense policy studies The Heritage Foundation.

Comment: When Swedish author Bertil Haggman in 1978 published his first book on terrorism (Terrorism – vår tids krigföring, Terrorism – Warfare of Our Time) he predicted that political terrorism would be the warfare of the future. The 1970s was the era of ideological left wing extremist warfare: the Baader Meinhof gang in then West Germany, the Japanese United Red Army, the Palestinian terror groups, IRA, ETA and others. The gravest terror threat at the present time is Islamic terrorism not idealogical terrorism. It has been allowed to develop because the West is not fighting back with determination. As Mary Habeck explained in her important book Knowing the Enemy – Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror (Yale, 2006) jihadism is a specific ideology that calls for the destruction of the West and democracy. The murder of innocent men, women, and children are part of this ideology. It claims that Islam is under attack by the West and that Islamic terrorism is a war of defense. The period from 2008 to 2016 has been a disaster in the field of counterterrorism. It is time, as James Carafano writes, for the West to fight back, fight back in earnest. A strategic response to Jihadism is needed and must replace the pure tactical thinking of the present.

UKRAINE’S HISTORY IS IN GOOD HANDS

Volodomyr Viatrovych, director of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, in an article in Kyiv Post on June 17, 2016, refuted leftist media attacks on him and the work of the institute. There are several leftist journalists and academics in the West that attempt to smear Ukrainian freedom fighters of the 20th century. Excerpts below:

Journalist Josh Cohen’s article [“The Historian Whitewashing Ukraine’s Past”, Foreign Policy, May 2, 2016) claims that I, and others, are “whitewashing” Ukraine’s past. What we are really doing is de-Sovietizing it.

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After reading the first few lines of his initial email requesting comment from me on February 25, I already understood he was talking to me as if I were the accused. “How would you respond to Western historians’ allegations that you or your staff has a willingness to ignore or even falsify historical documents?” he asked. His other questions were similar in nature.

Despite the angry, even accusatory, tone, I prepared detailed answers, and yet only fragments of my responses were printed in his article.

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Cohen…quotes a Ukrainian historian named Stanislav Serhiyenko who laments the ways I could use a new law to restrict access to archives for research. I could not recall a historian with that name; that’s because Serhiyenko is not a professional historian, but rather a left-wing student activist, who works with and is published in the pro-Russian publication Gazeta 2000.

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Cohen’s article is full of factual mistakes and distortions. Streets were not, as he wrote, renamed after leaders of the OUN and UPA under President Viktor Yushchenko, or if they were, there was never any direct involvement from the then-president.

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The deeper the author [of the article] gets into history, the more errors there are. With ease, he states unconfirmed figures: 70,000-100,000 Poles were “killed by the UPA,” he says. These were the figures quoted in political statements but there is no study based on sources, or, at the very least, reliable methodology that calculates these numbers. The origin of the figure of 35,000 Jews Cohen claims were killed by nationalists in western Ukraine is also unclear. It’s one you can’t find in the works of even those historians who are the most critical of the OUN.

Furthermore, Cohen insists that the OUN took an active participation in the 1941 Jewish pogrom in Lviv. There are no OUN documents to suggest such an active participation of the organization during this time; while individual members of the OUN took part, the organization was more focused on announcing the June 30, 1941 Act of Restoring Ukrainian Independence.

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OUN members…saved hundreds of Jews from German executioners — one of them being Olena Viter, a Greek-Catholic nun and OUN member who has been honored by Israel as one of the Righteous Among the Nations.

But aside from factual errors, and questionable sources, the bigger point is this: One of Cohen’s main arguments is that I am “whitewashing” Ukrainian history by including the Ukrainian liberation movement within Ukraine’s national historical narrative and ignoring its involvement in the Holocaust and the ethnic cleansing of Poles during the Second World War. He calls this “revisionist history.” I would disagree. During the Soviet period, the mention of the nationalists was automatically associated with Nazis (even though the two were not the same thing). Moreover, the Holocaust was almost completely Sovietized: that is, the emphasis was on how Soviet citizens were the real victims of the Holocaust, not Jews. In no way am I, or the Institute of National Memory, falsifying the “narrative of the Holocaust” — especially when that narrative was all but forgot in mainstream Soviet Ukrainian history. If anything, the Institute has worked hard to place the Holocaust — and its memory — back into the Ukrainian national historical narrative by including it in public displays and discussions.

Cohen also systematically ignores more than 10 years of history in which the Ukrainian nation was split between two larger countries, devastated by genocide, the Pacification, the Great Terror, repression and inter-ethnic strife. Yes, the OUN was a militant organization — no historian denies that fact. But what Cohen is doing is denying the importance of the OUN to western Ukrainian history during the interwar period…

Eastern Ukrainian history and western Ukrainian history were never identical, and one cannot please one group over another.

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What I, and the Institute are working hard on doing, is advocating for a united national historical narrative in which all historical activities of all Ukrainians are mentioned — nationalist, communist, and even those of the diaspora Ukrainians who fought in the Allied forces on the beaches of Normandy, in Monte Cassino, and in the Pacific Theatre.

Cohen takes a very Soviet perspective on the history of Ukraine during World War II.

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Ukrainians did kill other nationalities; they also killed other Ukrainians, and other nationalities killed each other, and Ukrainians, in horrible ways. This period of Ukrainian history resists being simplified to black and white. For instance, while, the OUN and UPA did not collaborate with the Germans or the Soviets, there were occasional individual pacts of understanding among all three.

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The accusations that the OUN and UPA collaborated, and that they participated in the Holocaust and in ethnic cleansing are characteristic of Soviet historiography and propaganda. It’s a narrative that is still supported by a number of researchers in the West to this day (including those referred to in Cohen’s article…). But Cohen presents this as the only correct version of events, and thus, attempts to argue against their views, based on newly discovered documents becomes deplorable “revisionism” — words that, for many readers in the West, have a clear association with “Holocaust denial.”

The most important conclusion Cohen draws in his article is that I am restricting access to the archives in order to censor and promote my version of Ukrainian history…the number of users accessing the old KGB archives has significantly increased, including researchers from outside Ukraine, and the number of Ukrainian citizens gaining access to them has grown by almost 50 percent, according to archive data.

The transfer of historical documents from the Security Services, the Foreign Intelligence Services, and the Ministry of Interior not only rids these agencies of the extra work, but it also allows for the documents to be processed by historians and archivists, instead of soldiers and officers. This transfer is an important element of the general democratic transformation of a post-totalitarian society.

The International Council on Archives recommends, as best practices:

“Records produced or accumulated by former repressive bodies must be placed under the control of the new democratic authorities at the earliest opportunity and these authorities must assess the holdings in detail. … The security bodies must ensure the transfer of selected files and documents either to the national archives, to the institutions dealing with compensation or reparation for victims of the repression and purging of former officials, or to the Truth Commissions.”

This was why special archival laws were adopted last year; our law is similar to ones that already operate in 11 post-communist countries in eastern Europe (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania, among others).

It is this very opening of communist secret service archives that is to act as the main guarantee against the state imposing one single view of the past. Furthermore, it helps serve as one of the guarantees of democratic development. This is why Ukraine chose to follow the examples of its neighbors after the Euromaidan.

This process sits in contrast to the closed Russian archives (which were recently put under the direct control of Putin). These serve as the foundation for the rehabilitation of totalitarianism, and are being used for this purpose today…this is quite another, more dangerous, story about the rewriting of the past and the use of archives, one to which Josh Cohen is not paying any attention.

Comment: The above article by Volodomyr Viatrovych is important setting the record straight as there is a number of leftist journalists and academics in the West who are involved in an attempt to slander Ukrainian freedom fighters, who in the 1940s and 1950s fought against Soviet and Nazi totalitarianism. A prominent leftist Swedish academic, Assistant Professor Per Anders Rudling at Lund University is among those who use the arguments of the Soviets against UPA, OUN and other Ukrainan liberation organizations. Rudlings’s articles are mainly published in leftist publications on the world wide web and he is constantly repeating the old Soviet lie that the Ukrainian anticommunist fighters were involved in the Holocaust. There has been international complaints against Rudling but Lund University has so far taken no action against him.

NATO INCREASES SUPPORT FOR COUNTRIES BATTLING ISLAMIC EXTREMISM

Washington Times on July 9, 2016, published an AP report on the Warsaw NATO summit. The allies agreed to provide increased military support to countries in the Middle East and North Africa that are targets of Islamic extremism, including using NATO surveillance planes in the fight against the Islamic State group. Excerpts below:

Alliance leaders also agreed to launch a new naval mission in the Mediterranean, and made commitments to maintain a stable military presence in Afghanistan and to fund Afghan security forces through 2020.

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NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said NATO will start a training and capacity-building mission for Iraqi armed forces in Iraq, a country he called central in the fight against IS. NATO is also working to establish an intelligence center in Tunisia, a major recruiting ground for IS, and will shortly start providing support to Tunisian special operation forces.

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Stoltenberg said Obama and leaders of the other 27 NATO countries also agreed in principle for alliance surveillance aircraft to provide direct support to the U.S.-led coalition fighting IS in Syria and Iraq. NATO diplomats say they expect flights by alliance AWACS planes to begin this fall and Stoltenberg labelled the move “a clear signal of our resolve to help tackle terrorism.”

He said the alliance will launch a new maritime operation in the Mediterranean called Operation Sea Guardian, whose responsibilities will include counterterrorism.

NATO will also cooperate with the European Union’s efforts to shut down human smuggling operations that have fueled Europe’s greatest migrant crisis since World War II.

The alliance will also increase cooperation with Jordan, and is preparing to help the new government in Libya design policies and institutions to help it better defend itself against extremist organizations, Stoltenberg said.

“We will provide greater support to our partners, so they can secure their countries and push back against violent extremism,” he said.

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The U.S. has pledged to provide $3.5 billion annually to fund Afghan forces, and the government in Kabul is expected to contribute as much as $500 million. Allies would provide the remaining $1 billion. The funding would maintain a total of 352,000 Afghan Army troops and police officers.

“We are very close and I am certain we will reach that (funding) level,” Stoltenberg told reporters. A senior U.S. administration official said NATO has commitments for about 90 percent of the goal.

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Stoltenberg said specific numbers will be finalized this fall, he said.

U.S. administration officials said they believe the number of forces dedicated to the NATO mission will be a bit more than 12,000. The officials were not authorized to discuss the details publicly, so spoke on condition of anonymity.

U.S. Army Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the NATO supreme commander, told reporters the U.S. has pledged about 6,700 of that total, about 200 fewer than it currently provides.

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Scaparrotti said the Afghan mission is key to global security.

“We know that there are al-Qaida and (Islamic State) components in Afghanistan,” he said. “If we fail there we will certainly see that impact in our global counterterrorism campaign that we’re executing. It will make it harder.”

The Warsaw summit, NATO’s first in two years, was considered by many to be the alliance’s most important since the Cold War.

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NATO INCREASES DEPLOYMENTS TO EASTERN EUROPE

Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty on July 8, 2016, reported that NATO leaders have endorsed a major new deployment of armed forces to Eastern Europe, a direct response to growing belligerence from Russia and the largest such move by the alliance since the end of the Cold War. Excerpts below:

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Aside from Russia, the alliance faces a growing number challenges including Islamic State extremists, cyberattacks, and the influx of millions of people seeking refuge in Europe.

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The leaders from the 28 members formally authorized four multinational battalions of up to 1,000 troops to be led by Canada, Germany, Britain, and the United States. They will be stationed in Poland and the three Baltic states.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called the new deployments, which had been announced earlier, an appropriate deterrence against Russia.

“We have just taken decisions to deliver 21st century deterrence and defense in the face of 21st-century challenges,” Stoltenberg told reporters.

Much of the summit’s focus is on Russia, which seized the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in March 2014 and backs separatists whose war with Kyiv’s forces has killed more than 9,300 people in Ukraine’s east.

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The treaty’s Article 5 is the most important component of the alliance, obligating all members to come to the aid of another member if it is attacked. The clause has been invoked only once in the alliance’s 67-year history: after the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.

Russia’s interference in Ukraine has increased concerns in Poland and Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which were under Moscow’s thumb until the disintegration of the Soviet Union a quarter-century ago. All are now NATO members.

“We are witnessing the policy of aggression and notorious lack of respect for international law, internal sovereignty, and territorial integrity,” the summit host, Polish President Andrzej Duda, said in opening remarks.

Further reflecting the unease many European nations are feeling toward Russia, the leaders of Finland and Sweden — neither of whom are members — were attending the summit for the first time.

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The U.S.-led battalion comes on top of an additional armored U.S. brigade, which U.S. officials announced earlier this year would begin rotating into Eastern Europe on a regular basis. That brings the number of fully manned U.S. combat brigades with a presence in Europe to three. A brigade comprises about 4,200 to 4,500 troops.

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“NATO does not seek confrontation…. The Cold War is history and should remain history,” Stoltenberg said.

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Earlier, Duda took a hard line, saying NATO must stand firm in the face of what he called Russian “blackmail and aggression.”

“Everyone who is tempted to apply the rule of force even for a moment” must be made to “understand quickly that is does not pay off,” Duda said.

Ben Rhodes, a top White House official, also reiterated the stern message intended for Russia, saying Moscow’s continued aggression would provoke a NATO response.

“What we are demonstrating is that if Russia continues this pattern of aggressive behavior, there will be a response and there will be a greater presence in Eastern Europe,” said Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser.

Destabilization

In addition to military force, Western governments say President Vladimir Putin’s Russia has used cyberattacks, propaganda, and other methods in an effort to destabilize European countries and undermine Western unity.

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NATO leaders have said Russia’s aggression in Ukraine was what led to the deploying of additional forces. They have also taken Moscow to task for potentially dangerous maneuvers in recent months such as jets buzzing U.S. warships.

Critics of the increased NATO deployments say they are too small to serve as a serious deterrent…

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One thing that is not expected is substantial movement toward NATO membership for Ukraine or for Georgia. Those two countries’ aspirations join the alliance were a catalyst of a five-day war in 2008 during which Russian forces drove deep into the former Soviet republic.

Montenegro, however, is participating in the Warsaw Summit as an observer after signing a preliminary agreement in May. The Balkans nations is expected to formally join the alliance next year.

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Comment: The critics of the deployments now decided are correct when they say they are to small to deter Russia. To guarantee a stable defense against Russia much more is needed: Sweden and Finland must join NATO. An additional 25 000 NATO troops are needed in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine should be decided on as early as possible. Especially important is the protection of Ukraine. As things stand today Russia could invade Ukraine and NATO would not be obliged to fight to protect this country seeking EU membership. Additional US troops need to be deployed in Germany to be ready to offer further protection of Eastern Europe.

THE XINJIANG EXILE GOVERNMENT IN TAIWAN, 1954 – 1969

In May 2016 the Wilson Center in Washington DC published CWIHP e-Dossier No.73 on the Xinjiang exile government in Taiwan from 1954 to 1969 by Justin Jacobs. In September 1949, Republic of China officials in this far northwestern province of Xinjiang surrendered to the Chinese Communists…. Excerpts below:

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Guerilla resistance movements soon broke out among several Uighur and Kazak groups, the most prominent of which were headed by Osman Batur, a Kazak chieftain from Altay, and Yolbars Khan, a Uighur official in Hami. After more than a year of sporadic resistance and desperate flight, both men reconvened…to discuss their dwindling options. Yolbars chose to head a small party of Uighurs and White Russians in hopes of reaching India via Tibet, while Osman remained behind with a small encampment of sick and injured Kazaks. Yolbars successfully reached India, where Nationalist officials offered to fly him onward to Taiwan. Osman was not so fortunate, meeting his end on the execution grounds of Urumchi in April 1951. More than two thousands Kazaks, however, left Osman behind and eventually settled in Kashmir.

Later that same year, Yolbars Khan arrived in Taipei…the [Taipei government] began to formulate long-term plans for the perpetuation of a Nationalist administration on Taiwan that continued to represent China in world affairs. One of these plans called for the creation of an Office for the Chairman of the Xinjiang Provincial Government (Xinjiang sheng zhengfu zhuxi bangongchu). This office was intended, along with the revival of the Committee for Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs (Meng Zang weiyuanhui), to continue to lay claim to the non-Han lands and peoples of China’s northern and western borderlands. Among historians of modern China and Inner Asia, the Committee and its activities are fairly well-known.

The same cannot be said of the Xinjiang government in exile, which was headed by Yolbars Khan until his death in 1971.

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There was [however] a competition between Yolbars Khan in Taiwan and Xinjiang refugee leaders Isa and Emin in Turkey to win declarations of loyalty from the thousands of Xinjiang refugees who continued to stream out of China throughout the Mao years.

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Justin M. Jacobs is Assistant Professor of History at American University. He is the author of Xinjiang and the Modern Chinese State, available from University of Washington Press.

Appendix

Excerpts from Report and Recommendations by Yolbars Khan on Uighur and Kazak Refugees in the Middle East, 16 July 1956

[Source: 11-04-01-11-02-030, “Xinjiang sheng zhengfu ji Zhongguo huijiao xiehui zhi guomin waijiao huodongi,” West Asia Division, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Archives of the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica. Obtained by Justin Jacobs and translated by Caixia Lu. Accessible at digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/123645.]

Report

July 16
45th Year of the Republic [1956]

1. Since your humble servant [I] returned from the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in the 42nd year of the Republic [1953], I have called on you to present my report once, and it has been two years since I have presented myself in front of you to receive your instruction. On 13 January this year, I was summoned to see you but I happened to be ill thus I was unable to present myself for the meeting. I could only request to call on you in mid-June when I recovered. I wish to report and give suggestion on matters concerning the general conditions of and assistance to Xinjiang refugees overseas over the past year. But I was unable to do so as I had a relapse recently, which has gradually caused me to feel weary. I am afraid that this will be a lingering illness that will not permit me to call on you in the near future, which may delay your decision. Therefore I have compiled my reports and suggestions in writing for your reference and decision.

2. I am a junior official in a remote place and have neither learning nor skill. My only virtue is the determination to serve the party and the country, and I take it upon myself to fulfill Your Excellency’s long-cherished wish. Your Excellency is deeply aware that I have twice given up all my family possessions in aid of the country, and this time round I have even fled thousands of miles to Taiwan without anything. Our family has no choice but to depend on you for everything. Moreover, I have been in ill health all these years and am in constant need of medication. My health has taken a turn for the worse early this year, and I have been bed-ridden for seven months. I spent so much money that I find myself in serious debt, which I am unable to cope with. [For five nights, I wondered in shame?] Your Excellency’s loyal servant is shamelessly abasing himself to receive the charity of others. I would rather be honest with you to demonstrate my wholeheartedness. I urge Your Excellency to report the requests to…[meaning of following part of sentence unclear]

3. I plan to submit my request to call on you when my health improves slightly.

4. I hereby append four items of report, four items of suggestions and two items of requests for your instruction and approval.

Yours respectfully,
Yolbars [Khan]

Outline of Report and Suggestions

A. Items of Report:

1. General conditions of Xinjiang refugees living abroad:

i. General conditions:

Fellow countrymen who are seeking refuge overseas are mainly based in places such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Kashmir, and Pakistan. As for the number of refugees in each place, there are about 8000 or so in Saudi Arabia, about 1000 or so in Turkey, about 200 in Kashmir, about 400 in various areas in Pakistan, and about a few dozen people in Cairo. In all, there are about 11,000 people or so. In addition, there are also Xinjiang refugees in various Middle East countries such as Lebanon and Iraq, but there has been no accounting of their numbers, thus it is unclear how many people there are.

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This makes the situation very unfavorable to the refugees who have undivided loyalty to our beloved motherland. But few of the refugees in these two countries have wavered all these years, and they have been in close contact with me, and there should not be any fundamental changes to this situation in the future. Refugees in Turkey have obtained citizenship from that country, and their circumstances are special.

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ii. On the activities of the so-called “East Turkestan Independence Movement” led by Emin and Isa.

General situation:

Regarding the independence movement led by those such as Emin and Isa, I tried to talk sense into them and counsel them earnestly and sincerely, and have made repeated reports on what transpired.

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3. On the situation in Xinjiang after its fall to the bandits:

As the Xinjiang province is in the inaccessible and remote frontier area, it is difficult to know the real situation behind the Bamboo Curtain apart from sporadic reports coming from Kashmir and Pakistan. Little news is being leaked out, except that in July last year [44th year of the Republic], local residents in Hotan were forced by hunger to stop the Communist bandits from transporting food supplies, and a large-scale bloody rebellion ensued. Similar incidents have also occurred in places such as Kashgar. It is proof of how the bandit gang is oppressing the Xinjiang compatriots and shows how the people are unhappy with Communist rule that they have risen in bloody rebellion. Thereafter, the bandit gang had announced the establishment of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region last year, with measures such as giving autonomous rule to the Uighurs in Southern Xinjiang. Based on the reactions of various parties, the compatriots of Xinjiang are very aware of the deceptive ways of the Communist bandits and this has not reduced their enmity toward the Communist bandits in the slightest bit.

4. The various activities of the Communist bandits in the Middle East:

The Communist bandits had originally been shunned by the Middle Eastern countries. For instance during the 42nd year of the Republic, the Hajj delegation sent by the bandit puppet regime to Mecca had already reached Pakistan, but found themselves in the awkward position of having to turn back when Saudi Arabia refused to let them in, which proves the point.

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B. Items of Suggestion:

1. Organizing and gaining control of the Xinjiang refugees in various Middle Eastern countries:

Our international position in the Middle East is becoming increasing untenable ever since Egypt recognized the bandit puppet regime. But the shift in diplomatic position of Egypt and other countries seems to be the result of delicate relations caused by Arab-Israeli rivalry and British and French colonial policies, and not because they favor the Communist bandits while being prejudiced against us. Thus, it is not yet impossible to remedy the situation and prevent it from worsening. And we must not allow the conspiracy of Emin and Isa to gain traction. I think that in order to win over the Middle Eastern countries, we must first win over the compatriots in these countries, because they are all Muslims and have the same way of life and the same beliefs as the people in these countries, thus they are able appeal to their emotions and influence their minds. As for the activities of Emin and Isa, if we are to prevent them from achieving anything, our foremost task should also be to fight for the support of our compatriots. Thus it seems necessary to organize and gain control over the Xinjiang refugees in the Middle Eastern countries as soon as possible.

Method of implementation: propose to have the security bureau of the Supreme Defense Council look into and execute this.

2. Step up on publicity and pacification work in the Middle East:

Before we are able to effect measures to organize and gain control of compatriots in the Middle East, in order to achieve timely results, I propose that we should send Hajj pilgrimage and visiting delegations this year in order to prevent compatriots in these countries from feeling doubtful and hesitant.

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3. Building of a mosque in Taipei:

The mosque is a place where Muslims pray to Allah, and wherever there are Muslims in the world, there will be magnificent and stately mosques. Since the bandit gang occupied the Mainland, there have also been mosques of significant scale built in Beiping, and they have also set up Islamic institutes in places such as Beiping, Dihua [Urumqi], and Lanzhou, so as to gain popularity by deceiving the people. Since the government shifted to Taipei, there have been many Muslim compatriots who have followed suit. Although there have also been mosques established here, they are all located in civilian homes and are cramped in scale.

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Thus I think it is necessary to build a mosque of a sufficient scale. The Muslim compatriots in Taiwan have been thinking about this from very early on but are limited in their financial ability and cannot afford to do so.

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4. Selection of exemplary young Muslims to further their studies in Taipei and relax the restrictions to enter Taiwan.

Education and culture not only helps to build a pool of talent for the country, but also play an important role in fostering a sense of mutual trust and unity. Although the government had spoken of grooming talented administrators for the border regions in the past and stipulated preferential rules for young people living in border regions wishing to further their education, attitudes have been a little passive, and those implementing it have not been able to understand the substance of such a policy.

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Method of implementation:

i. I propose that the education ministry can draft detailed measures to stipulate that Taiwan’s universities, middle schools, and elementary schools must set aside a number of places for youths from the border regions in order to make it easier for them to study.

ii. Proposal to advise and urge youths from the border regions living overseas to come to Taiwan to study and for the government to provide them with travel fees and all living expenses for the period of study.

5. Please consider the setting up of a special fund to provide overseas temporary relief in a timely manner.

On the issue of providing relief to Xinjiang refugees living overseas, I have been putting in requests to the Executive Yuan and the Chinese Mainland Relief Association to do so for years, and most were collectively processed by region. But the official correspondence goes back and forth for years and the waiting refugees are grumbling. There were fewer cases of issuing small sums of temporary relief. It would seem that this is not practical, and I propose to set up a special fund to provide assistance in a timely manner, so as to bring real benefit.

Method of implementation: I propose to have a lump sum of 2,000 US dollars [enough to help about 130 people whose cases have been processed] or to increase the funding under my management with a temporary sum of assistance at 20,000 New Taiwan dollars per month, the surplus of which would be returned, whereas I would claim with receipts if there is a deficit.

TAIWAN MILITARY AID TO CAMBODIA

In March 1970…an anticommunist regime was established in Cambodia under General Lon Nol. Delighted to see an anticommunist [government] emerging in Indochina, Chiang Kai-shek assigned General Wang Sheng the task of building ties between Taipei and Phnom Penh.

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A ROC Military Mission…was installed in Phnom Penh to promote bilateral cooperation. Wang Sheng’s papers at the Hoover Institution Archives reveal that Lon Nol…wanted to introduce Taiwan’s political warfare system into his army…Beginning in September 1972, Wang’s personnel [went to] Cambodia to kick-start a psychological and political warfare training program, at the expense of Taiwan’s government budget. That cooperation soon expanded to several other fields such as intelligence gathering, mass mobilization, sabotage, raids, and infiltration. Wang Sheng conducted his last inspection trip to Cambodia in December 1974, only to witness the rapid worsening of morale and local economic and security conditions. On the eve of the collapse of the Lon Nol regime in mid-April 1975, Taiwan was the last country to evacuate its Military Mission in Phnom Penh.

The fall of Indochina to the Communists in the spring of 1975 increased Chiang Ching-kuo’s urgency in implementing Taiwan’s secret military and intelligence diplomacy.

Between the mid-1970s and the early 1980s, Wang Sheng conducted many clandestine visits to virtually every non-communist state in Southeast Asia, including Thailand (1975 and 1982), Indonesia (1975), the Philippines (1979), and Malaysia (1982), where he met with top leaders and discussed military and intelligence cooperation.

Source

Wilson Center’s CWIHP e-Dossier no. 70, “Taiwan’s Cold War in Southeast Asia” by Hsiao-ting Lin. 2016.

TAIWAN MILITARY AID TO SOUTH VIETNAM

Prominent Hoover Institution, Stanford University, scholar Hisao-ting Lin has in Wilson Center’s CWIHP e-Dossier no. 70 (“Taiwan’s Cold War in South East Asia”, April 2016) highlighted Taiwan aid to South Vietnam. It is the history of the building up of Saigon’s political warfare capacity. Excerpts below:

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Both Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo believed that Taiwan’s national security could best be preserved if anticommunism continued to be a predominant ideological force in East Asia. Therefore Taiwan’s military and intelligence cooperation with its neighbors threatened by communism was important.

Republic of China General Wang Sheng…had joined Kuomintang (KMT) in 1939, Wang had joined the KMT and had been sent to join the Three Principles of the People Youth Corps training course run by Ching-kuo. After the course, Wang was chosen to work for Chiang, which he did for the next fifty years, including the care of Ching-kuo’s twin sons….

In the 1950s, Wang established the precursor to the General Political Warfare College, the elite training school for the army and party cadres. Second in command of the civil-military programs, welfare, and services section of Chiang Ching-kuo’s cadre system, Wang’s main task was laying the foundation for the China Youth Corps under Ching-kuo’s leadership. He spent most of the 1950s and 1960s training army political cadres, helping the Chiangs reinforce their anticommunist ideology into every corner of Taiwan’s military.

Wang Sheng made his name as a prominent anticommunist in the Cold War’s Asian theater when he was slated to export and transplant Taiwan’s political warfare system to South Vietnam.

In early 1961, at the request of Ngo Dinh Diem, the president of South Vietnam, Wang led seven Chinese Nationalist officers in inaugurating a series of anticommunist political and psychological training programs in Saigon to strengthen anticommunist ideology and consciousness among South Vietnamese forces.

The officer corps soon became actively engaged in reforming South Vietnamese military education, training, intelligence, propaganda, and psychological warfare… The program, which subsequently became an official military advisory group, signified the beginning of what Chiang Kai-shek described as an interdependent anticommunist alliance between Taiwan and South Vietnam. In the spring of 1975, as Saigon was about to be captured by the North Vietnamese, Taiwan was the only country in the world still having an unofficial military advisory group there to assist South Vietnam.

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Comment: Psychological warfare during the Vietnam War was an important part of the defense against North Vietnamese aggression. The unpublished book manuscript “Victory in the Mind” of Swedish author Bertil Haggman provides details on Allied information and psychological warfare activities. It includes the aspect of the safe-conduct passes used to persuade communist troops and guerrillas to defect. In general the leaflet war of the Allies played an important part as well as the radio war and the loudspeaker war. The Psychological Warfare Operations The U.S. Military Assistance Command (MACV) was aware of the importance of psychological warfare operations ( PSYOP). Throughout the war the Joint U.S. Public Affairs Organization (JUSPAO) supervised, coordinated and evaluated all U.S. PSYOP in North and South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. It also provided the Republic Vietnam (South Vietnam) with support programs.