THE COMMUNIST THREAT IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79R00904A000800020004-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 9
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 12, 2005
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: May 24, 1962
• Content Type: MF

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CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE A G E N C Y
OFFICE OF NATIONAL ESTIMATES
24 May 1962
DRAFT
MEMORANDUM FOR TBE DIRECTOR
SUBJECT: The Communist Threat in Southeast Asia
1. The effort to check Communist advance in Southeast Asia
is admittedly one of the most difficult undertakings of US policy
and one which at present seems to offer no very sure promise of
success. It is sometimes suggested that, because the means now
being employed in this effort are so costly and unpromising, the
only real solution is somehow to remove the main source of
Communist power in the area -- Comr..unist China. This paper argues
that such a view misjudges both the nature of the Communist threat
in Southeast Asia and the feasibility of the alternative proposed.
2. In Southeast Asia, as everywhere clse in the world, the
main source of the Communist threat to existing governments is
not external but internal. While it is true that China has the
military capability to overrun the states of that area, it is
extremely unlikely that in the contemporary international climate
even the Chinese would attempt so course an act of aggression.
DOCUMENT NO.
NO CIIA GE IN CLASS, 0 GROUP I
ECLASSIFIED Excluded from automatic
CLASS. CHANGED TO: TS S C downgrading and
NEXiREVtEWDATE: declassification
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If the states of Southeast Asia fall to communism it will al-
most certainly be because their governments have been ineffectual.,
and have failed to deal with the social disorder arising from
bacIviardness and the need for modernization. Their failure in
this regard would allow a native Communist moverment, nourished
by outside influences, to develop and ultimately overthrow them.
3? That it is the internal condition of a society which is
the crucial factor in its ability to escape Communist control is
Manifest from the experience of these states which are neighbors
of the USSR and its European satellites. All of these states
have been exposed to subversive efforts from the Bloc but none has
been taken over, Scandinavia is geographically placed in relation
to the USSR somewhat as Southeast Asia is in relation to China,
but in 45 years this area has never been in any danger of being
taken over by communism. Greece survived a civil war in which the
Communists were supported from adjacent bloc territory and there
is no serious Communist threat in Greece today. Communism failed
to get off the ground in Austria despite the Soviet occupation.
Turkey has no Communist problem despite decades of Soviet propa-
ganda and diplomatic pressure. Even so weak and corrupt a govern-
tent as that of Iran has not fallen to Communist control. In some
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of these cases US aid has played a role in their resistance,
but in every case the key factor was a determined government
coping with internal communism and with the social conditions
that would favor it.
4. For a variety of historical and cultural reasons the
states of Southeast Asia are more vulnerable. Most are former
colonies which have not yet achieved stable governments or de-
veloped an effective apparatus of state administration. The drag
of traditionalism and backwardness on the one hand and the pres-
sures for development and modernization on the other give rise to
deep social tensions. Political leaders who understand very much
about the world scene or even about the forces at work in their
own societies are few. Altogether the states of Southeast Asia
offer the kind of political-social quagmire in which Communist
subversion operates to best advantage.
5. Even so, the governments of Durma, Thailand, Cambodia,
and Malaya are not today exposed to any serious threat of Communist
internal revolutionary war. To some extent their very backwardness
and traditionalism is a protection against the intrusion of
Communist subversion with ideas and methods so alien to the
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ancient ways. They have the advantages of having already achieved
national independence and of being able to sustain their popula-
tions fairly well by Asian peasant standards. Despite their in-
ternal problem, and the further ones which disruption of the
traditional social fabric through modernization will bring, they
have a good chance of escaping Communist subversion if they can
develop tolerably stable and effective governments under intelli-
gent and courageous political leadership. Given this latter con-
dition, the ability of Communist China to force them under Communist
control merely by external influence will be limited.
6. The most serious threat to these states over the next
few years arises from the possibility that the Communists might
succeed in winning Laos and South Vietnam. If this should happen,
the Communist push southward would acquire a certain momentum, if
only because it would probably be believed in the remaining
Southeast Asian states that its further advance was inevitable.
There might then be a loss of nerve and will on the part of the
existing regimes; a traditional spirit of "accouriodation" whereas
in the Buddhist cultural pattern could come into play; and a step-
by-step subversion of the governments themselves, with or even
without mass revolutionary action, might occur. However,, there is
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nothing foreordained about such a process. It is conceivable
that, even if Laos and South Vietnam were lost to communism, the
other states of the area would still find the strength and will
to preserve their national independence. The manner in which
communism won in South Vietnam and Laos could give rise to a
variety of unforeseeable counterforces both within and outside
the area. In any case, the projection of Chinese Communist power
over Southeast Asia would not be a foregone conclusion and other
outside influences would still be a factor in the outcome.
7. The present struggle to check the Communist assault on
South Vietnam and Laos is thus of major if not necessarily de-
cisive importance for the whole area. The two countries are
really involved in a single action of revolutionary warfare, since
the mainspring of aggression in both areas is located in Hanoi.
The case of Laos is relevant to the theme of this analysis pre-
cisely because the prospects for halting a Communist takeover
have grown so dir.: it is the classic case which illustrates that
the real strength for a successful resistance to Communist revolu-
tionary warfare must be found within the society itself and cannot
be supplied wholly from outside. If Laos is lost to communism it
will not be because the US has not given enough aid but because
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its government is ineffective and has not been able to imbue its
people with a will to resist.
8. The vigorous Communist regime in North Vietnam, which
is now waging a dangerous revolutionary war against South Vietnam,
was not created by Communist China and is not acting as the latter's
agent. It found its origins and strength in the anticolonialist
struggle against the French, a struggle which Ho Chi Minh and the
Viet Minh were waging before the Chinese Communists won power in
Peiping. Although in the later stages the Vietnamese Communists
did receive help from China., their real strength was that they had
captured the movement for national liberation within their own
country. It was because they identified themselves with the
nationalist cause rather than because they propagandized the
peasants into believing in Marx and Lenin or Mao that they be-
came strong enough to defeat the French. The revolutionary war-
fare they are waging in South Vietnam and Laos today is an ex-
tension of that nationalist struggle.
9. The slogans of national liberation promise not only to
fulfill socialist and nationalist aspirations but also to rectify
social evils associated with the colonialist period. The revo-
lutionary mood in the peasant villages which responds to Communist
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leadership expresses a hope that backwardness and poverty can
at last be overcome by a new order of things. The mood of the
Vietnamese peasants is not in this respect different from that
of peasants in other undeveloped areas of Asia, Africa, and Latin
America, but in Vietnam the Communists have succeeded in stimula-
ting and organizing peasant unrest into revolutionary action.
This is not surprising since the traditional social order has been
exposed to great strains in the turmoil of a war which has been
going on in Indochina for 20 years.. It is the youth whose whole
experience of politics has been in the disruption of these years
who have provided the Communists with recruits.
10. Unfortunately, in a nation where the pressures for
national fulfillment and for radical social change are very
great the government in Saigon has allowed itself to be charac-
terized as conservative. However praiseworthy its purposes may
be, its methods of rule are traditional and it has not therefore
been able to associate with itself the aspirations for change
found in the population. It has not been the equal of the
Communists in ability to organize its power potential -- political,
economic, and military -- for the revolutionary civil war being
waged against it. Beyond this, it is associated with Western
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powers, is guaranteed by them through SEATO and is receiving mas-
sive economic and military aid from the US, an ally of the former
colonial power. It is therefore vulnerable to the charge of being
in a degree a continuation of the colonial regime and a hindrance
to nationalist and racialist vindication.
11. What we are resisting in Vietnam and Laos, therefore, is
not a projection of Communist power from China but a revolutionary
war waged with nationalist slogans and led by Communists who are
Vietnamese. The role of China is a supporting one and this role
is less important in a material than in a political sense: what
is important is that a powerful Communist regime exists in Peiping
and declares that it "cannot be indifferent" to a buildup of
Western influence and military power in states on its southern
border. In a material sense, the support of the USSR has been
more important to Hanoi than China's. But the Communist capability
in Vietnam rests in the first instance on the power and appeal of
the Vietnamese Communists themselves.
12. Consequently, it is incorrect to describe US policy in
South Vietnam as merely nibbling at the edges of the real threat.
The real threat, and the heart of the battle, is in the villages
and jungles of Vietnam and Laos.. That battle can be won only by
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the will, energy, and political acur.,en of the resisting govern-
cents themselves. US power can supplement and enlarge their
power but it cannot be substituted. Even if the US could defeat
the Communists militarily by a massive injection of its own forces,
the odds are that what it would win would be, not a political vic-
tort' which created a stable and independent government, but an un-
easy and costly colony. Frustrating and uncertain of outcome as
it may be, there is therefore no serious alternative to the policy
we are following -- aiding, encouraging, and cajoling the local
governments to do the things which they must do, and which only they
can do, to secure their own defense.
13. It is obvious that the collapse of the Communist regime
in China would greatly ease the struggle against communism in
Southeast Asia, if only because the psychological effect of so im-
mense an event would alter the whole array of political forces in
that area, and indeed in the entire world. However, it is equally
obvious that any atterpt by the US to bring this about by military
means would involve the USSR and thus would almost certainly re-
sult in general nuclear war.
FOR THE HOARD CIF VATIONAL ESTIMATES
SHERMAN KENT
Chairman
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