Practicing History_ Selected Essays - Barbara W. Tuchman [116]
Beyond Hurley, responsibility lay with the President. Hindsight makes his rejection of the Embassy’s advice appear short-sighted, but every historical act is entitled to be examined in the light of the circumstances that surrounded it. Without doubt the primary factor influencing him was the Russian agreement obtained at Yalta. Both Roosevelt and Hurley believed that the Soviet Union held the key and that its still secret pledge to enter a treaty of alliance with Chiang Kaishek (subsequently fulfilled in August) would in its effect on both sides in China serve to block the danger of civil war.
This belief was made possible only by underestimating the Communists as a Chinese phenomenon with roots reaching down into a hundred years of unmet needs and strength drawn from the native necessity of revolution. Back in 1930 Ambassador Nelson Johnson, a man of no unusual powers but able to observe the obvious, reported that communism was not the cause of chaos in China but rather the effect of “certain fundamental conditions.” One such small voice, however, was overwhelmed as time went on by the conventional wisdom which held, first, that the Chinese would never accept communism because it was incompatible with the structure of Chinese society, and, second, according to the Molotov dictum which much impressed Roosevelt, that the Chinese Communists were not Communists at all. On these premises it was easy to persuade oneself that the Communists were not the coming rulers of China but a party of rebellious “outs” who could eventually be reabsorbed. When Hurley and Wedemeyer during this visit, along with Commodore M. E. Miles (chief of Naval Intelligence in China), conferred with the Joint Chiefs, “they were all of the opinion,” as reported by Admiral Leahy, “that the rebellion in China could be put down by comparatively small assistance to Chiang’s central government.”
A second factor was that no proponent of another view, no one within the government who could effectively counter Hurley’s version, had regular access to Roosevelt. This left a terrible gap. The President, again according to Leahy, who lived in the White House, “had much confidence in Hurley’s reliability in accurately carrying out the duties assigned to him in the foreign field.” Moreover, if Leahy can be used as a mirror, the White House bought the thesis that Hurley was undermined in his efforts by a group of jealous career diplomats who had “ganged up on the new Ambassador appointed from outside the regular foreign service.”
Here is a beam of light on the most puzzling aspect of our China policy: why the information and opinions provided by experienced observers maintained in the field for the express purpose of keeping our government informed were so consistently and regularly ignored.
The answer lies in the deep-seated American distrust that still prevailed of diplomacy and diplomats, the sentiment that disallowed knee-breeches for Americans. Diplomacy means all the wicked devices of the Old World, spheres of influence, balances of power, secret treaties, triple alliances, and, during the inter-war period, appeasement of fascism. Roosevelt reflected the sentiment in his attitude toward the career Foreign Service, which he considered a group of striped-pants snobs drawn from the ranks of entrenched wealth (as many of them were), unrepresentative of America, and probably functioning as tools of the British.
There was enough truth in this picture to make it persist despite passage of the Rogers Act in 1924 formalizing the Foreign Service as a career based on entry by examination and promotion by merit. The Act itself had been the result of wide criticism of cliques in the State Department, leading to a congressional investigation.
Ironically, the snob reputation had not on the whole been valid for China, which, not being considered a particularly desirable post by socialites who preferred the Quai d’Orsay and the Court of St. James’s, had been filled by academics, missionaries’ sons, and hardworking men promoted from the