The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2008

W hat I want to get at is a problem perhaps more abiding, and that is, why these men were not lis- tened to even before they were persecuted. The burden of their reports taken as a whole was that Chiang Kai-shek was on the way out and the communists on the way in, and that American policy, rather than cling in paralyzed attachment to the former, might be well advised to take this trend into account. This was implicit in reports from officers who had no contact with the com- munists but were united in describing the deterioration of the Kuomintang. It was made explicit by those who saw the com- munists at first hand, like Service in his remarkable reports from Yunan, and Ludden, who journeyed into the interior to observe the functioning of communist rule, and Davies, whose ear was everywhere. They were unequivocal in judging the com- munists to be the dynamic party in the country; in Davies’ words in 1944, “China’s destiny was not Chiang’s but theirs.” This was not subversion as our Red-hunters were to claim, but merely observation. Any government that does not want to walk open-eyed into a quagmire, leading its country with it, would presumably re-exam- ine its choices at such a point. That, after all, is what we employ Foreign Service offi- cers for: to advise policymakers of actual conditions on which to base a realistic pro- gram. The agonizing question is, why is there a persistent gap between observers in the field and policymakers in the capital? While I cannot speak from experience, I would like to try to offer some answers as an outside assessor. In the first place, policy is formed by preconceptions, by long-implanted biases. When information is relayed to policymak- ers they respond in terms of what is already in their heads and consequently make policy less to fit the facts than to fit the notions and intentions formed out of the mental baggage that has accumulated in their minds since childhood. When President McKinley had to decide whether to annex the Philippines in 1898, he went down on his knees at midnight, according to his own account, and “prayed to Almighty God for light and guidance.” He was accordingly guided to conclude that “there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christian- ize them, and by God’s grace to do the very best we could by them, as our fellow men for whom Christ died.” Actually the main impulse at work was the pressure of the “manifest destiny” school for a stepping stone across the Pacific, but the mental baggage of a presi- dent in the 1890s required him to act in terms of Almighty God and the White Man’s Burden, just as the mental fix of his successors in our time has required them to react in terms of anticommunism. Closer observers than Almighty God could have informed McKinley that the Filipinos had no strong desire to be Christianized or civilized or exchange Spanish rule for American, but rather to gain their indepen- dence. This being overlooked, we soon found ourselves engaged not in civilizing but in a cruel and bloody war of repression, much to our embarrassment. Failure to take into account the nature of the other party often has an awkward result. … This desire not to listen to unhappy truths — “Don’t confuse me with facts” — is only human and widely shared by chiefs of state. Was not the bearer of bad news often killed by ancient kings? Chiang Kai- shek’s vindictive reaction to unpleasant news was such that his ministers gradual- ly ceased to bring him any, with the result that he lived in a fantasy. [FSOs’] reports must also pass through a screen of psychological factors at the receiving end: temperament, or private ambitions, or the fear of not appearing masterful, or a ruler’s inner sense that his manhood is at stake. (This is a male prob- lem that, fortunately, does not trouble women — which might be one advantage of having a woman in high office. What- ever inner inadequacy may gnaw at a women’s vitals, it does not compel her to compensate by showing how tough she is. You might cite Golda Meir in objection, but one gets the impression that her tough- ness is natural rather than neurotic, besides required by the circumstances.) Proving his manhood was, I imagine, a factor pushing President Nasser of Egypt into provoking war with Israel in 1967 so that he could not be accused of weakness or appear less militant than the Syrians. One senses it as a factor in the personali- ties of Johnson and Nixon in regard to withdrawing from Vietnam; there was that horrid doubt: “Shall I look soft?” It was clearly present in Kennedy, too; on the other hand, it does not seem to have both- ered Eisenhower, Truman or FDR. A classic case of man’s temperament obscuring the evidence is brought out by John Davies in his recent book, Dragon by the Tail . Stalin’s greatest error, he points out, was to underestimate Chinese com- munism. “He was deceived by his own cynicism. He did not think Mao could make it because, astonishingly enough, of his own too little faith in the power of a people’s war.” … National myths are another obstacle in the way of realism. The American instinct of activism, the “can do” myth, has lately led us into evil that was not necessary and has blotted the American record beyond 50 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 8 Why Policymakers Do Not Listen By Barbara Tuchman Editor’s Note: On Jan. 30, 1973, historian Barbara Tuchman was the keynote speaker at an AFSA luncheon honoring Jack Service and the other China hands, including John Paton Davies. Excerpts from her remarks follow; for the full text, see the March 1973 Foreign Service Journal.