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Chapter 5 "Free Government Cannot Exist without Safeguards against Subversion" The Clandestine Cold War in Southeast Asia I Local security forces must be trained in clandestine operations and sabotage techniques particularly for the penetration of enemy forces and the gaining of operational intelligence. Pinpointing of enemy concentrations and hideouts can permit effective use of trained "hunter-killer" teams. [In spite of] political inhibitions and UN or other control commissions and treaty arrangements, there should not be any long-standing iron-clad bar to such action when overriding national security interests prevail. - ROBERT W. KOMER , national security adviser, 1961 If we had our druthers to relive bygone days, wouldn't we look for more Nelson Miles to replace George Custer, strengthen the cadre of civilian agencies with a more select group of men and train assigned personnel for the realities of the frontier? - EDWARD G. LA NSDALE to Walt W. Rostow, Special Group on Counter-Insurgency, 1961 From 1956 to 1959 Jeter Williamson, the police chief in Greensboro, North Carolina, spent much of his time in the Philippines jungles, training rural police and constabulary units to suppress remnants of the Huk guerrilla movement . Like the constabulary officers of yesteryear, Williamson was willing to endure difficult field conditions in an effort to export professional American standards and improve police efficiency, now in the service of the Cold War. No Ugly American, he took pains to learn Tagalog and other dialects in the countries where he served, and he ate local foods. In Thailand, where he went after leaving the Philippines, Williamson earned a commendation from the king for helping to secure the border through his work with the Border Patrol Police (BPP).! A throwback to an earlier era of colonialists who believed deeply in the virtues of American capitalism and democracy, Williamson was a contemporary of CIA agent Edward Lansdale, a man fond of quoting Tom Paine's dictum "Where liberty dwells not, there is my country:' Upon entering mainland China in 1955, Williamson commented that he was "standing at the end of the free 99 world:" In spite of their romantic illusions, America's clandestine Cold Warriors in reality fought on the side of political reaction, opposing nationalist movements that were socialist or communist in orientation owing largely to historical circumstance and their role in spearheading opposition to Japanese colonialism. Southeast Asia emerged as a key Cold War theater following the triumph of the Chinese revolution in 1949, which threatened the Open Door policy and America's foothold on the continent. The danger ofthe revolution for American planners, Noam Chomsky points out, was not the threat ofmilitary aggression, which was nonexistent, but what Walt Rostow writing in 1955 called the "ideological threat;' specifically "the possibility that the Chinese Communists can prove to Asians by progress in China that Communist methods are better and faster than democratic methods."3 Successive administrations consequently became committed to a continental rollback strategy, halting the progress of socialism across Asia, of which police training was a critical dimension. Advisers like Williamson trained security forces in riot control and counterintelligence , set up communications networks to aid in the tracking of subversives, and oversaw various destabilization campaigns.' These in turn contributed to a rising tide of violence and the stifling of democratic development. The cases of Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines are instructive in this respect. In these three countries, American programs were intermeshed almost completely with CIA operations and designed to prevent the rise of socialist or left-leaning regimes closely tied to China. They succeeded at this task, though at a terrible human cost. An "Unorthodox Project": Police Aid in Indonesia and the Overthrow of Sukarno Indonesia was the site of one of the largest and longest-running police programs . As George McT. Kahin documents in his groundbreaking study Subversion as Foreign Policy, American policymakers valued the country almost as much as Japan because of its oil and mineral wealth. Secretary of State Dean Acheson warned President Truman in January 1950 that "because of its great wealth and the dynamic character of its nationalist movement, [Indonesia's] political orientation has a profound effect on the political orientation ofthe rest ofAsia.... It [also] lies athwart the principal lines of communication between the Pacific and Indian Oceans:'5 After World War II, the United States supported the Dutch in retaining their colonial rule over Indonesia under the Marshall Plan. When the Dutch sent troops to crush the nationalist movement in 1948, the Truman administration changed its position, largely...

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