FRIDAY, JANUARY 6, ]967 THE 311CHIGAN DAILY PAGE THREE FRIDAY, JANUARY 6,1967 THE MICHIGAN DAILY PAGE THREE a Technology Hol ds Victory in ast-West Contest Colegiate Press service SAIGON-It is one of the major ironies of contemporary history that Marxism, rooted in a tho- roughly materialistic concept of man, has in the hands of Mao Tse-tung, Lin Piao, Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap become the most powerful spiritual force in! Asia-while the United States, which claims a Judaeo-Christian spiritual heritage, has sought to counter that force with increasing amounts of military and material aid. Fundamentally, we have come to view other peoples' ideologies as obstacles to problem-solving, which we have unconsciously raised to the status of a new ideology. Per- haps, for lack of a dialectical con- tent to our own new ideology, American society is increasingly preoccupied with a subtle variation ofrthe "might makes right" theme: to wit, that technology, emotional detachment, and hard work will solve any problem if applied in large enough doses. The emphasis throughout our culture on problem-solving tech- niques, procedures, machinery and cost-efficiency is only the most general example. More specifically, the Viet Nam war is a major prob- lem for us- and we are employing evitability of the victory of Peo- on the wall and are desperate all the technology, emotional de- ple's War. to chalk up some advances of their tachment, and hard work at our The fact that Americans them- own. They must either match command in order to solve it. selves are .generally more im- American weapons with Chinese, The Asian view of the world- pressed with their technology and or push the Viet Cong to a Pco- and the war-is often quite dif- wealth than with their democratic ple's War victory using political' ferent. Much of Asia still has social instituions merely proves to rather than conventional military deeply-rooted class conflicts. The these Asians the bankruptcy of force. One way or another, they gulf between rich and poor-in American ideals and the rightness need to win. Hong Kong, Saigon, Calcutta-is of their own cause. Thus the frantic Great Leap so stark that most people do not There are other Asians who Forward in 1957, designed to like to talk about it. At the same seem genuinely to value Western broaden the economic base for time American technology and our democrartic ideals, and who are Chinese technological and indus- emphasis on the Three E's-effort, searching for an Asian idiom in trial development. Thus Ho's efficiency and effectiveness-pro- which to express them. Hitherto it eagerness to employ Soviet tech- duce conflicting reactions. has been elusive: objective con- nicians at surface-to-air missile Technology the Key ditions in Asia are much more sites around Hanoi. Thus China's On the one hand overeager favorable to the Marxian inter- haste to deliver a nuclear warhead, American advisors are indulged pretation of social history than to which she now has done. In one like children who come running the Lockean. of his more didactic moments in in to tell their parents they have Embrace Western Aid 1953, Mao said, "Political power the answer to an insoluble prob- Another sizable group of Asians comes from the barrel of a gun." lem. On the other, Asians are im- understands full well why Amer- So the race is on, with Asian pressed by power and prosperity- icans are more impressed with their communists trying to make niajor especially power. They trace past technology than with their dean- breakthroughs in technology or defeats and loss of face to the ocratic social traditions. Practical war in time to thwart the im- superiority of Western technology, people, they recognize and seek the mense appeal of Western aid to and they see technology as the key prerequisites of power. Many of poorer or underdeveloped Asian to wining back that lost power and them feel that though Chinese nations. dignity. ideology is more fitted to today's And who is winning? There Most Asian societies are poor, Asia. and therefore carries greater have been several test cases in the coup with strong support from powerful student groups through-' out the country. American advisors here believe it wouldn't have hap- pened but for the U.S. presence in Viet Nam; they are probably right. General Suharto now apparently has hopeful feelers out for renewed American aid. -In August North Korea care- fully dissociated herself from the Peking line, and began making overtures in Moscow's direction. One reason no doubt was the con- tinued presence of the Eighth U.S. Army south of the 38th parallel. -Meanwhile, South Korea and Taiwan are being billed as major American aid success stories, -Unconfirmed reports say Gen- eral Ne Win in a recent White House visit asked President John- son for American aid to counuer Chinese-supported guerillas in the northern forests of Burma. To Burma watchers, the xenophobic socialist general's American tour was surprise enough; U.S. aid would indicate a significant shift in Burma's foreign policy, which until now has been very deferential |to Peking. " -In the face of increasing guer- rilla activity in both countries, Thailand and the Philippines seem more firmly attached than ever to j American support. s -Even Malaysia, with British Iground troops guarding her bor- ders, called the U.S. her "greatest and strongest ally" during Presi- dent Johnson's visit October 30. Cambodia, Laos And that about wraps up South- east Asia, except for Cambodia, Laos. Cambodia, with strong support from France, has been leaning closer and closer to Peking. Ob- servers in Saigon feel the National Liberation Front uses Phnom Penh as a major base for its activities in South Viet Nam, and the American military seems increasingly in- clined to treat Cambodian terri- tory as an extension of Viet Cong controlled areas. Still, the official line from Prince Sihanouk is strict neutrality. Laos seems up for grabs, if any- body really wanted it. The Viet Minh appear to control eastern Laos (bordering North and South Viet Nam) jointly with the Pathet Lao, who have strong ties with Hanoi. Massive American aid has kept the western administrative capital of Vientiane conservatively neu- tral to pro-U.S., under the shaky control of Prince Souvanna Phou- ma. But as John F. Kennedy is said to have remarked, Laos is not a land "worthy of engaging the attention of great powers." Its chief importance for some years has been as a staging base for guerrillas operating in Viet Nam. colored, predominahtly agricul- tural, and anxious to vindicate their national pride. They arel watching China very carefully. Itr is natural that the emotional ap- peal of Marx and Mao would weigh; heavily here, especially to thoseI convinced of the historical in- emotional appeal, tomorrow's Asiaj and by implication Western aid, if must embrace Western technology, it is to arrive in the modern world. Much of the explosive natu'e of the conflict between the U.S. and China derives from this last fact.: Mao and Ho see the handwriting past year. Though the results are not necessarily permanent, they. have generally spelled a series of major disasters for the Chinese. The Score Card -In Moslem Indonesia, the sixth largest country in the world, the army engineered an anti-Chinese -Associated Press WHAT FUTURE FOR HER COUNTRY? A South Vietnamese peasant woman watches an Amer ican patrol head back towards their base from which they carry out operations against guerrillas. 'a Mao's Dogma Directs War's Basic Goals (Continued from page 2) overwhelmingly agricultural. Their technology and values are those of traditional societies based on farming. After a hundred years of Western exploitation, they. remain basically market areas and vast hinterlands, with an occasional urban complex serving chiefly as a distribution center. Again, it was Mao who first in- corporated this idea into the body of communist dogma, thereby con- verting it from a European to an Asian ideology. The Chinese re- volution was consciously based on the peasantry rather than the city proletariat, which was controlled almost until the end by Chiang Kai-shek. But it was left to Lin! Piao, Mao's apparent heir; to give the doctrine its most striking theo- retical form. News to Parents! Insurance for Students! 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