A Fresh Look at Free Asia

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WE HAVE reached a crossroads in Asia, and a sweeping reëvaluation of our policies there is no less than essential. Significantly that part of Asia to which we have paid the least attention may hold the key, not only to our own future, but to that of the democratic world. In the vast crescent-shaped area stretching from the Mediterranean, across the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent, to Southeast Asia and the South China Sea, live one-third of the world's people. Today they are uneasy and uncommitted, suspicious of the Western democracies, but as yet reluctant to cast in their lot with Moscow or Peking.

Soviet policy-makers have long been convinced that the road to world domination runs through Asia, and that once Asia has fallen, Europe will surely follow. Consequently these 700,000,000 free Asians have always had a high priority in Moscow. It is fortunate for the free world that the early astuteness of the Soviet geopoliticians was not matched by the skill of Soviet tacticians. In 1923 the Comintern mission to Sun Yat-sen's China exhibited a fatal ignorance of the stuff of which Asian revolutions are made, and the subsequent clumsiness of the Soviet during the 1920's and 1930's in dealing with the vast, vulnerable colonial territories of South Asia showed that few lessons had been learned.

It is fair to say that the present robust position of Communism in Asia is due, not to the revolutionary genius of the Soviets, but to that of the Chinese. Communist success is due particularly to Mao Tse-tung, whose grasp of Asian revolutionary forces enabled him to capitalize on the defeat of Japan and the default of Chiang, and thus to forge the People's Republic of China. Although it was Mao who gave world Communism its second chance in Asia, the Soviet Union is now equally awake to the opportunity. Communist leaders have learned that pressure applied in Europe tends to increase the unity of the West, while pressure applied in Asia tends to blow it to smithereens, and Molotov and Chou En-lai have teamed up effectively in bringing this pressure to bear...