Nixon, Shakespeare & Haldeman on Southeast Asia and Japan

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Hi Frank, how are you?

I have three things that I want to talk to you about.

One is going to be a trip I just took to Southeast Asia.

The other are our exhibits with the Soviet and really a pre-European liberty with the Soviet as a package.

And then the third is just one or two of our exhibits.

Now, on the visit to Southeast Asia, what I did was this.

When overnight ended, the immediate number of Europe ambassadors to the Pacific area countries took place in Baguio.

You had all of the ambassadors to all of the countries in the Pacific Basin.

meeting the Philippines.

After that, I went to those island or peninsular countries.

I went to Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines.

Now, the purpose is to try to assess attitudes on four questions.

Four questions.

were after the colonization of what?

Corvallis Communist China.

How do you envision the emergence of Japan?

And where do these three things, after the colonization of what?

Communist China and Japan, how do they link together with the Nixon Doctrine?

I talked to two chiefs of state.

I talked to Marcos and to Separto.

I talked in most every instance to prime ministers.

From my own view, even more importantly, I talked to editors, writers, heads of television networks, educators, professors, and that sort of situation.

Now, I'll start out very briefly with a chief submission meeting and go through that and then take you on.

The chief submission meeting was rather refreshing because it was a very clear clash of opinion.

I found that refreshing.

on two questions, on Japan and China.

Your ambassadors are, in the Pacific, have clearly opposite views, many of them, on where Japan is going in the Pacific.

And they have clearly opposite views on how we should deal with communist China.

And those were, those really came out.

You probably didn't even accept the report on that.

Later on in this, I will mention two men that I think you should keep your eye on for different reasons.

One is Bill Porter.

ambassador to Korea, and the other is David Osborne, who is your consular general in Hong Kong.

I'll come back to the reasons why.

Another thing of significance was that I attended the Chasing Mission conference a year ago in Tokyo, and at that time, the entire focus of attention was on China, and they were paying very little attention to Japan.

This time, they paid a very great deal of attention to where Japan was going.

because the factors of Japan's emergence are becoming so self-evident, their economic strength, their potential interests, all of that sort of that.

That was a big difference from a year ago when it was entirely chic to talk about China.

And even though the U.S. press conference was on China this time, the ambassadors were very, very interested in where does Japan come into this.

It was a very good presentation on dope addiction, and that sat the ambassadors up in their chairs.

I come away with the thought, I mentioned this to others, but I think if it were to be implemented, you would have to feel that it was a good idea.

You know, if you consider the world as communication centers, and really the Western world is having four major communication centers, those being Paris, London, New York, and Tokyo.

Now, that's where opinion in the West is formed, in those four centers.

The reason for that is that France

has all the link to the francophone countries.

It's agency France Press.

It's a tremendous influence of Le Monde and the hegemony of France in many places.

In England, it's the BBC external services.

It's Reuters worldwide.

It's the English language.

It's the influence of the London Times.

It's the Commonwealth link.

It's all of that.

And Japan is beginning to dominate communications in Asia, New York for obvious reasons.

Therefore, in the framework...

there are four centers of communication that really set the tone.

Tokyo, New York, no, this is fine, Paris, and London.

Now, in that context, I think you should consider your ambassador to Paris and London.

Not just a country ambassador, but an ambassador to a communication center.

Same thing in Japan.

And here you had your ambassadors together for three days, talking about problems which you're

which are intermixed with the whole American image, Vietnam, your proposal on communist China, the question of Taiwan, the question of the UN, dope addiction in Southeast Asia, all of that sort of stuff.

Annenberg and Watson are politically appointed ambassadors.

What they know about those questions is what they've been reading for 10 years in the New York Times.

And I couldn't help but think to myself, what an education for those men.

Anna and Harriet Watson, if they were to sit in meetings like this, because then when they go back to Paris and London, and they have dinner with the head of BBC, or the head of the editorial board of the London Times, or that sort of thing, they have that marvelous anecdotal experience and feel, and the authority that comes from saying, last month when I talked with our ambassadors, or last month when I was in so-and-so, or that sort of thing.

Now, I think there is in state, and I don't say this critically, I say it out loud,

I think there is an unawareness of what the communications revolution has done in this regard.

And they hold a meeting of Pacific ambassadors as if the world stopped at the end of the Pacific, because that's the way it's geographically structured.

I think that if you took your communications ambassadors, that is Japan, Paris, and London, I think if you thought of them, not just as country ambassadors, but as communications ambassadors to the Western world, it would be useful.

Now, in consensus on what they think on Southeast Asia about these matters, obviously it varies from country to country.

But I think it's fair to say that there is a general consensus along the following line.

Their opinions on, after the agonization on our troops that was drawn on this, that Hanoi will not use frontline troops in any efforts against South Vietnam, that they will step up protracted war.

that they will use as terror in their other policies.

The obvious objective we have deemed to make South Vietnam in chaos, ungovernable, the people were wary from a coalition government and the communists will eventually take it over.

But they will do that by keeping Laos and Cambodia as their channels.

Well, there's so much for North Vietnam, South Vietnam.

Now, China, which is an entirely separate thing.

The communist China,

their consensus judgment is very strong and almost unanimous, and that is that Communist China will make major subversion efforts, nothing overt, but major subversion efforts, with the first target being Thailand, in Northeast Thailand and Northern Thailand, and with the second target being Malaysia and Indonesia.

leaving Singapore sort of alone and surrounded through Malaysia and Indonesia, and leaving the Philippines kind of as a sideshow because it's a little out of the picture.

Now, rather a startling thing for me, in these countries, there is an extraordinary lack of perception of the reality of Japan.

When you talk about Southeast Asia, the importance of what the United States has become

do and what the Soviet Union is going to do.

But when you bring into the conversation the fact that Japan is the third industrial nation on Earth, there is no raw material for it to be essential to it.

There is no source of energy.

All of its energy comes from the Marine Gulf and around through the Malacca Straits.

When you point out that Japan, under a present budget in 1974, will be spending at the rate of the seventh military power on Earth, which means it will automatically become that.

When you point out the sophistication of her economy, the extraordinary power of it, they listen.

But it simply hasn't dawned on them as to the enormous role of Japan.

And when you say, well, where will Japan mix into this?

You're almost forcefully drawing their attention to it.

But they right away go back to what Communist China is going to do, what the Soviet Union is going to do, what the United States is going to do.

India is just a non-factor.

It just doesn't exist.

Now, another thing to start with, and that is, in Malaysia, in Indonesia, and in the Philippines, the ethnic majorities have a distrust of the loyalty of the Chinese minorities that is so severe as to be almost virulent racism.

It's that bad.

Now, you can understand this because the Chinese minority was the center of difficulty during the Malaysian problem, and it was the center of some of the difficulty during the Indonesian problem.

Nevertheless, it is much more variable than I thought.

I would come away with this impression.

I think that if Communist China does what they think it's going to do, which is to make a major effort at subversion once we erode the continent,

I would say that there's a reasonable possibility of arguments.

These are the Chinese minorities.

Some of it's mixed with the fact that they have the money and run the businesses and that sort of thing.

They take the position that the Chinese are essential.

Many of them have links to the mainland, read Communist China, which gets things very cloudy.

As an outsider, you come away with the impression that that's not really true.

It's true maybe only in 10% of the cases.

But they think that it's true, and these are people, editors, publishers, television people, not just idiots.

Now, finally, and rather than fuss, the Nixon duck is perceived by them to be diplomatic camouflage before the United States withdraws.

I'll come back to that, because that's a big job for USIA.

We're simply not doing the job of getting out what the next doctor may be talking about.

We'll honor our patients, we'll honor our people with specific power.

That sort of thing is not getting through, nearly to the extent it should get through.

In very quick specifics, in the Philippines...

It's also a job for ambassadors abroad.

Yes.

just one or two little items, country by country.

I was with Marshall Green when he called President Marcos.

And he gave him a very strong pitch on the necessity for normalization of more rational relations with Chinese China.

And Marcos didn't like it for one minute.

He didn't want to impart it.

He didn't believe it.

He said he didn't see it all the way.

um uh henry viral in the philippines is a standard investment um i would say that they have a latent fear of japan and a distrust of china but there isn't so much a fear of china as it is

When I called on Soeharto, the ambassador was with me, and Soeharto emphasized at great length his interest in explaining the political institutions that he was creating in Indonesia.

He talked about the fact that they had 30-odd parties and that they were now going to have nine political parties, the upcoming elections and what those would mean, the fact that economic development, in his opinion, was the key to the standing subversion.

So his whole concentration

was on the development of political institutions, and he was very interested in economic growth.

Galbraith had told me later that that's the first time he had seen Sahari concentrate so much on explaining how he was trying to develop political institutions.

So I passed him along to do Fuller's work.

He really seemed to be quite convinced that

But that was necessary.

He was flat in saying that he thought subversion of Chinese would be a very major problem.

And the only way that he could combat it was to create political institutions and develop the economy.

In Japan, there is more sophisticated awareness on the part of the leadership there than I would have thought there was, about the very tied relationships of Japanese aid.

They are appreciative of Japanese aid, but they're rather aware that what Japan does is lend money to build a factory which supplies tires for Japanese cars, and that it's in effect a creation of a Japanese factory, and it's not an infrastructure loan or an untied loan or that sort of thing, but it's the United States that has it.

Now, in Singapore, I gave that one a very light pass, because I got into Singapore in the middle of the Singapore Herald crisis.

You know, he had this big problem with the press, and perhaps he read it up.

And so I didn't call up Lee Kuan Yew.

And the only thing I would say about Singapore is the obvious, that the industrial boom in Singapore is extraordinary.

It's still amazing.

It's still amazing, the situation.

Well, that's because it's a champion.

By coincidence, I had dinner there with Ambassador Skousenpeg.

Ambassador Salon was in town.

I'm sure you've heard from other sources.

He's a fine man.

Fine.

I went to the same airport in Malaysia.

Malaysia, they have a very sort of interesting attitude.

As you know, they're surfacing these

proposals for the Big Three, the Big Three in their view being Communist China and the Soviet Union and the United States, to guarantee them the travel there to Southeast Asia.

But then once again, when you're talking to the Big Three, and you say, you know, who are the Big Three, the Communist China, the Soviet Union and the United States, you say, well, where's Japan?

Japan's nowhere in that picture in their mind.

And yet, you know, you go out on the street, and you see evidences of Japan all over the place, and you go out at Malacca, and you look at the street, and every 15 minutes an oil tanker comes through, and it's a lifeline to Japan from where you go.

And so Japan's vital interests are involved.

Our peripheral interests are involved, but Japan's vital interests, there's no focus on that.

They're following the same thing.

They aren't focusing on the emergence of Japan.

When you mentioned the trade war,

and that sort of thing.

Their comment really is, what else can we do?

What choice do we have?

It's that sort of approach.

They clearly look on the United States as pulling out.

They fear extensive subversion coming down to them through the Thailand border after Thais are subverted.

And they feel that they have to make an arrangement with the Chinese of some sort.

Now, I had this cook sent to me every day when I was in Kuala Lumpur of the Voice of Malaysian Liberation.

That's a transmitter coming to China that broadcasts each day in a Malaysian language.

And it sits you right up in your chair because it is a very tough program calling for the assassination of Malaysian leaders, calling for a clear revolution in violence.

Congress China is certainly following a two-track system because the voice of the National Liberation is as rough and hard and preaching violence and overt revolution as you could possibly imagine.

In my judgment, in Kuala Lumpur, you have a dandruff team, and Jack Lydman is the ambassador, and it just happens that we have one of our best public affairs officers there, incredibly humble as a girl, and the two of them are, you're very well served in that regard.

Um, Hong Kong.

In Hong Kong, I went to the Nixon Library, which you will be pleased about.

It's a very attractive place.

I went in there, and there must have been 150 young children quietly reading.

You know, if you went to a library where there were American kids, there's always that little humbug and noise of someone just shooting spitballs.

Those Chinese kids are amazingly sound.

They can be clearly heard sound, and they're just reading and looking at the place.

It's attractive, it's well-decorated, it's light, it's Arabian, it's very well-used.

It's a small thing, but it's attractive.

And second, there's a story in Hong Kong which USIA missed to my chagrin, and I think the Western, I know the Western press has missed it.

It's less excusable than for us to miss it.

There has been, since January, the largest flood of refugees trying to get into Hong Kong from mainland China than they have had in a great many years.

Now there are many, there are rationalities to the reason that people say that they're sending the students out to the fields and that sort of thing.

In any event, I just leave you with it as a statement of fact that the flood of refugees trying to get out of the mainland and into Hong Kong has been larger in the last six months than for a very long time.

Now, I had dinner with the U.S. press people in Hong Kong.

Practically all of the bureau chiefs were there, of all the major media in the United States, in addition to people like Reuters and BBC and that sort of thing.

of the China watching post and granted that China is very chic in terms of news development these days.

Nevertheless, once again, the focus on Japan is non-existent.

They talk about the future of Asia being where China's going, what the Soviet Union's going to do, and what the United States is going to do.

They simply don't focus on Japan as being a big power.

Now we come back to David Austin.

Remember, I mentioned him a few years back, and a particular interest in Safari Museum.

David Osborne was a former deputy chief of mission in Japan.

He is a very decent, straightforward fellow, and you get the feeling that he's very able, he's fluent in Japanese and fluent in Mandarin Chinese, and a long-experienced State Department officer.

However, he has a very

very strong philosophical views on China, on mainland China.

In essence, he believes that the Chinese Communists are not basically aggressive, and that China is not basically aggressive.

That the solution to the Taiwan problem is to Hong Kongize

as he calls it, to Taiwan, to let it become a trading center, to let the military treaty with Taiwan fade away.

He believes that Japan will never rearm.

There's a true breakthrough in the human spirit.

Of all of this, these comments are hopeful.

But I rather felt like I was talking with Ken Valbraith in the days when he thought that this is about Nehru and the Chinese communists.

My concern is that David Osborne is so intellectual and so able and so convinced of the passivity of the Chinese communists and the fact that his hand will be content indefinitely not to be a factor.

that I am quite sure it will fundamentally affect, since your basic Hong Kong, let's say the China watching, structured in state and in your foreign service is Hong Kong.

I think that view is going to become pervasive in the think papers, because most of those think papers originate in Hong Kong.

And even more importantly, he is well respected and constantly sees the United States Bureau of Chiefs who are resident in Hong Kong.

So I think that some of the newspapers that emerged as a result of these very committed views will have to be looked at with some skepticism.

Osborne is not a son of a bitch.

He's a very decent fellow.

But this is what he thinks, and he really sells it at every opportunity.

That concerns me because we weren't getting reports on the flood of refugees from China, and we should be getting that from Hong Kong.

Well, that doesn't mean a great deal.

You see, that would upset the apple cart now, that sort of thing.

So I mention that because I think it could be useful.

Now, in Taiwan, obviously, there is a very deep worry.

They're not in the state of camp, but they get buffeted every day.

Now, the only point of interest to you, I went from Taipei down to Tainan, which is a city, as you know, in the southern part of the island.

It's almost exclusively Taiwanese.

The only presence we have in those southern cities are some little cultural centers, and we have some of our brightest and most important people in there who are fluent in Taiwanese, and they speak to the Taiwanese.

I went down and I met with them.

Now, they think they're young officers,

and they may have localitis.

So I give you that as a caveat.

Nevertheless, they're fluent in Taiwanese.

They constantly speak with the Taiwanese at all sorts of cultural and publications levels.

And they believe that the discontent of the Taiwanese living is much greater than the embassy believes it is in Taipei.

They feel that when, when Taiwan is trying to go into the United Nations,

It will do two things.

It will invalidate the return to the mainland green, and it will invalidate, therefore, the basic premise of the KMT rule, which is that they rule the country from Taipei and the provinces rule from Taichung.

And if they're not the ruler of the country, then why are they ruling Taiwan?

He believes that once that premise is invalidated, it will inevitably hasten the onset of trouble.

Those Yanwashes who speak to the Taiwanese.

And it's a little different view than you get from the Yanwashes back then.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

In Korea, the thing that impresses you right off is that arm.

That's that aggressive, well-trained, fine arm.

Our generals over there look at that army almost with nostalgia.

And they have very great confidence in it, provided it's properly equipped.

Now, Bill Fuller, in my judgment, Mr. President,

Bill Porter is the best ambassador that you have in the Pacific.

I won't go through all of the reasons I was going to, but I won't here.

Yes, sir, I do.

I think his philosophy is sound and he's strong and he's able.

I think that the two best ambassadors you have in the Pacific.

No, no, if I was very good.

Graham and Martin in Rome.

in that part of the world, and Bill Porter in Korea, in the Asian part of the world.

They're both very interesting people.

Byron's very good.

They're anticipating the Vice President's visit over there.

I'll just skip through some of them.

Now, I'm a minister.

I'm a fan.

I'm just a...

to mention to you.

You remember that you appointed James Mishner to the Advisory Commission.

I asked James Mishner, who has a Japanese wife who speaks Japanese, and he's got entree in circles that a lot of people don't.

I asked him to be with us as a public member.

In the inspection team I sent over to inspect our operations in Japan for 18 days, May 10th through the 28th.

I've sent him to the inspection team over every couple of years.

And this is...

canceled all his engagements, and spent 18 days in Japan, just immersing himself.

And since he's got a security clearance now, he's got everything from our side and everything from the Japanese side.

He then had to go to Europe, and I'm going to see him this week.

And what I know, I know only second-hand, but he is very concerned with what he perceives to be a potentially deteriorating

relationship in the attitude of Japanese influences about the United States.

And we may have a lot of other conclusions.

I mention this to you because if Japan is as keen as we consider it, you might wish to see me and get these views from him.

I leave that up to you as to whether you have an interest in doing that or not.

He is a member of your advisory commission, and I don't push it.

I simply say that he has submerged himself in this for 18 days, and I know he has come away with some views.

Now, he's strong enough in his youth to have indicated that he is going to try to mobilize some support in academia to help U.S.-Japanese relations on the cultural side and that sort of thing.

Now, I'll leave all of these other things to Jessica to go quickly to.

We'll just take only several moments.

Radio Free York, Radio Liberty, and exhibits.

Now I have to give this to you fast because I know you've got people waiting.

In my judgment, the most effective weapon that we have for communicating with the people of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union are in this way.

Radio Free York, Radio Liberty, number one, VOA number two, and the exhibits number three.

Let's put VOA aside.

We're talking about Radio Free York, Radio Liberty, and the exhibits.

And because of what I consider to have been handling, which has been largely an act, which in my judgment is not responsive to what I believe you wanted to do in maintaining this, both of these situations, the exhibits in Radio 3 or Radio Liberty, are in very deep trouble.

And both of them could go down the drain.

probably, and are at the RL possibly.

What we're in now, Mr. President, is a situation where we're in deep trouble in both.

At another time, there's a possibility.

I would want to develop with you why I think we're in deep trouble in both.

Because what you're seeing now is the inevitable culmination of the method of handling which has gone on for 18 months and put you in the box in both.

Now, that's pretty strong.

We took the position in both cases, in the exhibits and RFD and RL, when major efforts were made to dismantle these organizations, that we should be very, very careful in stating our position, that perhaps these names could be compromised.

Because, well, let me, I'll read you just a quick thing.

There's only one cable I brought you out of many that I picked.

This will make you angry, but you ought to know it anyway.

Your consul general in Munich is a man named Darius.

Munich is the home of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty.

The single greatest responsibility that the American consul general in Munich has is to be continually knowledgeable about Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, their usefulness, their liabilities, and the President's policy toward those institutions.

Mr. Darwin had talked with the Lord Mayor of Munich, Mr. Vogel, a while ago, on Radio Free, or Radio Liberty, just prior to the Lord Mayor going to Moscow.

Here's the cable that he sent, and here's the quote.

Vogel asked my personal opinion about the future of the two private centers.

Now remember, Mr. Vogel is the Lord Mayor of Munich who's going on the next day to the Soviet Union.

I replied that I thought that was a question that might arise only much later if Moscow demonstrated by a satisfactory Berlin settlement and other actions that a real relaxation of tensions in Central Europe is possible to achieve.

Emphasizing that I had no instructions, I said that if and when that time comes, I thought that the dissolution of the two stations

or at least a modification of their programming might then become a subject for negotiations between Vaughn and Washington.

Vogel indicated that this was his view also.

Now, if I understand your view, the dissolution of those two stations or a substantive modification of them is not something that you can name on.

The end?

Well, now...

these two things radio free europe radio liberty are things that i know about i don't know about things like the salt talks and the Berlin negotiations except indirectly but i know about these directly and i know the value of this nation and i know they have not been supported and they have not been fought for in the way that they should be

because people don't believe in these type of instruments, and they think that many of them are mechanistic to the modern age.

I find that point of view, one, not what I think your point of view is, and two, has led evidently to a situation where we may now lose both of these instruments, which I think will create serious domestic political problems, and beyond that, it's a wrong discussion.

Oh, it's a matter of course.

I'm sure, uh, if you're talking all the time.

All right.

Well, it seems that we're doing it good, but first of all, we've got to see who else is on the call.

And remember, Allender's co-writing so far, so you can't see who else is on the call.

Allender, I think, is better than Saltz.

Well, I think he's got to try to go around him if he can.

That's a little violent, but we can't.

Well, he's the chairman of the committee, and he's got it blocked, see.

At the present time, he's...

He's all right.

But if he told us, then I wouldn't talk with him.

All right.

Nixon, Shakespeare & Haldeman on Southeast Asia and Japan

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Also recorded on June 22, 1971

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