(3 of 5)
Against the Communist drive in Asia, the U.S. had for the last five years offered no firm or intelligent opposition. The U.S. had been lulled into a false sense of security by men (some lazy-minded, some worse) who said that Asia's problems were too hard to solve and, anyway, that Asian Communists were not really Communists.
MacArthur, whose job it was to police the boundaries of chaos in Asia, was not fooled. Never for a minute did he believe the U.S. secure in the face of the Red advance. He had expressed his forebodings to scores of American visitors to Tokyo. No quotation of any particular interview was allowed, but the gist, delivered in a resonant baritone, ran something like this: "Whether you like it or not, most of the human race lives around this Pacific basin. Here in Asia there are great de mands, great dangers, great opportunities —all neglected by the United States.
"In China we have made the fatal mistake every soldier dreads: underestimating the enemy. If we had dreamed that the Communists could take China, we would have swallowed Chiang Kaishek, horns, cloven hooves and all—if that was the way we felt about him. Personally I have great respect for Chiang."
The general's views, often and eloquently expressed, were well known in Washington. But for all MacArthur's reputation as a strategist, his pleas—considered political, and hence beyond his province—were largely ignored. In 1948 the Defense Department had answered with a flat "no" the general's request for more troops to buttress Japan, which MacArthur regarded as the only firm anchor of the U.S. position in Asia. Last January the State Department had overruled MacArthur's urgent proposal that Formosa be defended. He had warned Washington that Communist capture of Formosa would break the defense line Japan-Okinawa-Formosa-Philippines and drive the U.S. back to the line Alaska-Hawaii.
Two weeks ago, however, MacArthur finally succeeded in selling a bit of his program for Asia to Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson and General Omar Bradley, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After a week in Tokyo, Johnson and Bradley flew back to Washington armed with a strongly worded memorandum from MacArthur, and prepared at last to argue for a great investment of U.S. strength in the Pacific. They reached Washington less than twelve hours before the Communists invaded South Korea. It was the Communists who finally won MacArthur's argument for him.
President Truman's decision to defend Korea set off a chain reaction that ran through the Far East. He announced that the U.S. would defend Formosa and step up its help to two other governments, the Philippines and Indo-China, which were fighting Communist rebellion. The immediate reaction of the Philippine government was a statement from Defense Secretary Ruperto Kangleon that if the U.S. would take care of the Communist threat from outside the country, the Filipinos would speed up their campaign against the Huks in Luzon. Three days after the Truman decision, the first U.S. planes arrived in Indo-China and were delivered to the French. With renewed assurances of U.S. aid, the anti-Communist forces in Indo-China now had an opportunity of taking the offensive against the Red-led Viet Minh rebels.