Document created: 25 July 01
Air University Review, May-June 1981

A Time of Adjustment:
America and East Asia

Dr. Joe P. Dunn

Major changes have taken place in East Asia during the last few years. These include the end of the Vietnam era, new regimes and continuing crises in Southeast Asia, the deaths of Mao, Chou En-lai, Park Chung Hee, United States recognition of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), a growing economic and possibly military relationship between the PRC and the U.S., a new status for Taiwan, talk of American military disengagement from South Korea, and strained United States Japanese economic relations. These changes require adjustments in American policy. American foreign policy tends to be Eurocentric, and Asia has long been considered a troublesome peripheral area. When drawn into involvement in Asia—in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam—Americans wished to extricate themselves as quickly as possible and ignore the region. Assigning Asia a low priority is no longer possible. East Asia is central to America’s economic and strategic future.

The three books reviewed here address the new U.S. situation in the Far East. Two are collections of essays; one is an intensive treatise. Two focus on Sino-American relations; the other on the United States-Japanese Pacific partnership. All three are selections from distinguished scholarly series, and one is a major academic contribution; the other two are of some interest but lesser import.

At the moment of publication, Two Chinese States, a collection of essays that urge a gradualist approach toward normalization of relations with the People’s Republic, was dated, maybe outdated.* In the introduction, Robert A. Scalapino, one of America’s foremost Asia scholars, outlines three approaches to U.S.-East Asian relations: (1) a withdrawal or isolationist posture, (2) a united front against the Soviet Union (with a PRC-U.S.-Japanese alliance at its heart), or (3) an equilibrium strategy—a gradualist, balance-of-power orientation. Scalapino and the other authors in the collection favor the latter approach. The authors do not advocate a two China policy nor do they oppose normalization; they do counsel that the United States should proceed with caution and patience in its relations with the People’s Republic. They advocate the negotiation of bilateral pacts with China which guarantee the security of Taiwan and maintain the balance of power in the area. The United States should reject any PRC demands that are disadvantageous to Taiwan.

*Ramon H. Myers, editor, Two Chinese States: U.S. Foreign Policy and Interests (Stanford, California: Hoover Institution Press, 1978, $5.95), 84 pages.

In the essays, William W. Whitson details the military and diplomatic implications of normalization. Economist Norma Schroder points out the economic importance of Taiwanese trade to the United States and argues that it is possible to cultivate increased commerce with both Chinas. C. Martin Wilbur explains that the burgeoning economic, social welfare, and democratic political development in Taiwan should not be jeopardized by precipitous U.S. action. Editor Ramon H. Myers’s concluding essay elaborates on the demands and procedures for conducting the desired equilibrium strategy. The collection is interesting but not particularly significant now.

American concern about China extends beyond the issue of diplomatic recognition. Monumental changes have occurred in China since the death of Mao. The power struggles and internal maneuverings continue; the outcome and future of the country are still in doubt. Journalists, travelers, diplomats, and a few Asia scholars have attempted to explain these events. Possibly the best effort is by the noted Australian expert on China, Harry G. Gelber, whose study of the socioeconomic impact of China's quest for modernity during the 1975-78 time period focuses on China’s economic growth, technical development, defense needs and problems, and the political controversies in all of these areas.* Gelber details the problems of industrial growth, fiscal and resource allocation, capital accumulation, planning and management, and other aspects of decision-making. China must overcome many obstacles to achieve her economic aspirations. She needs capital, an educational infrastructure, technical capabilities and personnel, research capacity, communication with the outside technical and scholarly community, midlevel administrative specialists, and managers at every level. These needs cannot be met overnight. Gelber predicts that definitive conclusions about China’s modernization effort cannot be drawn until after the turn of the century.

*Harry G. Gelber, Technology, Defense, and External Relations in China (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1979, $18.50), 236 pages.

Gelber also explains the political dangers inherent in China’s current activities. The transformation from an ideological society to a technical-pragmatic state is fraught with controversies. The new class of technicians challenges the traditionalists whose standing and power are grounded in the old order. The followers of Hua Kuo-feng and Teng Hsiao- p’ing—Gelber still uses the Wade-Giles system of transliteration—vie with each other for authority. Serious conflict exists over resource allocation, urban versus rural development regional priorities, and local autonomy versus central planning. At the moment, consensus prevails on the goal of modernization, but a backlash could erupt if the program brings about major disruptions or is less than successful.

Finally, Gelber turns to China’s military development. Making forecasts in this realm is as difficult as predicting China’s economic future. Although a regional force, China’s ability to project power, either strategically or regionally, is limited. Her military forces dwarf those of Taiwan, but her capacity to deliver that power against the island is minimal. China poses little strategic threat to the great powers in the near future. Nevertheless, she is not impotent, and in some respects her vulnerabilities can be translated into political strengths. As Gelber explains:

. . . China will continue to play from weakness, albeit sometimes brilliantly, in an arena of global power adjustments. For all the new elements of technology, energy, and resource politics, it will be a familiar and classic game, a balance of power in which there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies. (p. 196)

This is an important book. It is one of the best and most intensive surveys of the Chinese economy and China’s prospects for future development. It is not light reading; Gelber’s prose is often ponderous. Although the layman reader can gain from the book, it is written for specialists. It will be quickly dated, but in the meantime, it is quite significant.

In the final book we turn from China to Japan. Encounter at Shimoda is a record of the Fourth Shimoda Conference on U.S.-Japanese relations, which was held in September 1977.* The city of Shimoda historically has been associated with U.S.-Japanese relations. It was near this city that Commodore Matthew Perry landed in the early 1850s to open Japan to the West. America’s first consulate in Japan was established there. The first Shimoda conference was held in 1967. At this fourth conference, 45 Japanese and 34 American participants—legislators, government officials, businessmen, labor leaders, journalists, and academics—discussed trade, Asian development, energy policy, and security issues. The editors, two American scholars, collected thirteen presentations to represent the activity of the conference. Most of the included selections were written by political figures rather than academics. Examples by American politicians include essays by Senator John Glenn, Congressmen Barber B. Conable, Jr., and Stephen J. Solarz, and John Sawhill of the Energy Department. The thirteen essays are divided into five topical categories: the future of U.S.-Japanese relations, security in Northeast Asia, political and economic development in Southeast Asia, Japan in international politics, and Japan and the world economy.

*Herbert Passin and Akira Iriye, editors, Encounter at Shimoda: Search for a New Pacific Partnership (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1979, $20.00), 257 pages.

For the most part, the articles are not profound. Scholars will consider them superficial; but they are well written, generally interesting, and of some value to the layman reader. They do address important issues and set the outlines of the debates involved. The book is useful if marginal.

In the early fifties, Douglas MacArthur attempted to turn American attention to Asia. His motivations and his methods may have been flawed, but his projection that Asia was the continent of the future proved astute. His admonition not to ignore Asia is still legitimate.

Viable economic relations with the East Asian powers and a stable military balance in the region are imperative today. Understanding, appreciation, flexibility, and policy adjustments are the demands of the present time.

Since 1802: Transition at the Academies

Captain Phillip S. Meilinger

In the preface to his book Ivory Fortress, Dr. Richard C. U’Ren notes that much of the literature regarding West Point is useless, "unless one has a taste for boys’ adventure stories." He has a point. In the past few years several authors, including U’Ren himself, have tried to redress this deficiency. Unfortunately, most of these efforts—The Brass Factories by Arthur Heise, West Point: America’s Power Fraternity by K. Bruce Galloway and Robert Bowie Johnson, Jr., U’Ren’s book, and a recent novel, Dress Gray, by Lucian K. Truscott IV—are largely anti-service academy polemics and of little merit. A more balanced work is School for Soldiers by Joseph Ellis and Robert Moore, but it deals only with West Point. There is a need for a balanced look at all the military academies, how they operate and where they are headed.

John P. Lovell, a political scientist at Indiana University, has attempted to fill this void with Neither Athens Nor Sparta? The American Service Academies in Transition.* He maintains that the four military academies in this country are in serious trouble and need to be transformed. After summarizing the histories of the academies, he argues that changes in American society since World War II have forced a search for new directions in the service schools. These new directions resulted in a clash between those who emphasized military training and discipline (the Spartans) and those who pushed for an increasingly academic environment (the Athenians). Because of this clash and its destructive nature, the academies have failed in their primary mission of graduating quality military leaders. This failure is evidenced by high dropout rates and recurring "honor scandals." Lovell contends that radical new solutions are required and offers four options in his concluding chapter.

*John P. Lovell, Neither Athens Nor Sparta? The American Academies in Transition (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979, $17.50), 362 pages.

The author’s insights into academy operation and politics and cadet attitudes and motivations are often excellent and thought-provoking. Deficiencies in Lovell’s research, however, diminish the overall impact and importance of the book.

Lovell begins by sketching histories of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard academies. The oldest of these, West Point (1802), was based on what he terms the seminary-academy model. In this model, the cadet received a sound education in engineering and mathematics from officer-instructors who enforced strict discipline and required daily recitation in the classroom. This environment placed a premium on what Lovell terms the Spartan values of duty, loyalty, and courage. In the nineteenth century such an education proved adequate for training officers to fight Indians and the Civil War. Thus, the Naval Academy (1845), and the Coast Guard Academy (1876) adopted similar programs.

Lovell claims that the academies continued with these century-old methods until after World War II. That conflict showed some political and military leaders that the seminary-academy model was no longer viable because of the increased complexity of modern warfare. Nuclear technology, systems analysis, occupation duty, and enormous mass armies demanded new techniques of leadership and command. The obvious place to begin such change seemed to be in the military academies, but academy officials, as well as many high-ranking graduates throughout the services, were reluctant to break with tradition. Even when the Air Force Academy was founded in 1954, the obsolescent West Point model was extensively copied. The values of culture and learning, the Athenian values, were given secondary importance to the Spartan. As a result, the new institution began with a flawed orientation. Fortunately, a young and dynamic dean, Brigadier General Robert F. McDermott instigated sweeping reforms that modernized the curriculum, diminished the Spartan influence, and strengthened the Athenian. McDermott’s unusual innovations—validation and transfer credit, academic majors, and follow-on graduate school— evoked immediate resistance and disapproval from the older, more conservative academies. Over the next decade, however, these changes gained considerable publicity, and eventually many were adopted, albeit reluctantly, by the sister schools.

But these new departures proved to be insufficient. A cheating scandal which swept West Point in 1951 was duplicated at Colorado Springs in 1965. Other cheating scandals flared in 1967 and 1972 at the Air Force Academy and in 1976 at West Point. Lovell implies that when General McDermott retired in 1968 a major force for reform and innovation at the academies was retired as well. Subsequently, the schools have sunk into a period of reaction and retrenchment from which they have not yet emerged, except for a recent major alteration forced upon them from without: the admission of women.

Lovell feels it is time to pick up the reins of leadership dropped over a decade ago. The schools have failed to keep pace with the changes in society, and unless enlightened leadership is discovered, the academies will continue to suffer from high rates of attrition and periodic honor scandals that are symptomatic of deep-rooted institutional ills.

To remedy these ills, Lovell presents four scenarios: a combined service academy, mixed civilian-military collegiate experience, the academies as postgraduate institutions, and continued gradual incrementalism. None of these proposals are really new; rather they are ideas previously advanced by various sociologists, psychologists, and political scientists. Significantly, all options would result in a marked turn toward the Athenian ideal and also a continued "civilianization" (Lovell’s term) of the academies.

These proposals are of some interest and deserve serious thought and discussion. American society, as well as the American military establishment, has undergone great change in the past three decades. It would seem reasonable to expect change in the academies as well. The schools do have problems; they have had

them for some time and no doubt will continue to have them in the future. It is important that men like Lovell, himself a West Point graduate, illuminate these problems and offer solutions. No doubt some will disagree with the extent of the problems described by Lovell and contest his proposed remedies. But it would be unwise for anyone to dismiss his observations and proposals out of hand as unnecessary or unjustified. They deserve consideration.

However, I think the author skirts a central issue in his analysis. What is the mission of a military academy? That question, though posed, is never really answered in this book. Unfortunately, that may be because the academies themselves are unsure of the answer. Nevertheless, resolving this question is the first essential step to understanding the schools.

First, it is necessary to state what is not the mission of a military academy. In my opinion, it is not to graduate top scholars or engineers. These specialists are an absolute necessity in the military today, but they can normally be recruited from the civilian sector. Nor is it the mission of an academy to produce athletes. Teaching military studies is another highly desirable but nonessential function. Such topics can be learned in summer camp or an ROTC classroom at considerably less expense to the taxpayer. Not even a combination of these functions comprises the total mission of the academies. All are important, even necessary to an officer, but by themselves they are meaningless.

The real mission of military academies would seem to be of the spirit. They should engender an attitude, a feeling, a sense of responsibility and duty to country. Academics, athletics, and military studies are merely tools that the dedicated leader can employ. Without the proper devotion and inborn sense of commitment, such tools are useless. As Lovell points out, all the curriculum changes in the world will not increase devotion to duty; such things are not learned from books. Rather, the academies should serve as leadership laboratories to train people to obey and command, to take care of subordinates, to react under pressure, to do what is right even though it is unpopular, and to develop a toughness of the mind as well as the body. One attempt to achieve these unquantifiable and somewhat nebulous goals is through a close and continuous association between cadets/midshipmen and officers. Hence, the academies emphasize military faculties, small classes, frequent counseling sessions, and, perhaps most important, participation by all staff members, and their families, in the cadet environment. The Air Force Academy places particular emphasis on the latter idea.

Desirable leadership traits are also fostered by what the author somewhat sarcastically refers to as "saga building." In order to instill pride and esprit, students are told of heroic exploits performed by previous graduates (The Long Gray Line approach). Buildings, auditoriums and dormitories bear the names of famous predecessors. Uniforms, customs, and ceremonies recall previous eras—tradition is continuously emphasized and fostered. Although such influences may be smiled at by some, one only need read, or better yet hear, the Duty, Honor, Country address of General MacArthur at West Point in 1962 to understand the powerful hold such ideas do generate. The academies hope that a sense of history and fraternal relationship between staff and student will plant seeds of inner commitment that will bloom at a later date. This inner commitment when coupled with an excellent education, athletic prowess, and military studies will produce a quality officer and leader.

A second crucial question is whether the academies are in fact producing a suitable product. To me, the criteria of too many "honor scandals" and excessive attrition rates seem inadequate for this purpose. As has been pointed out by academy officials, discovering and punishing those guilty of cheating is not a scandal, but failure to move against violators is. Even so, the number of students who leave the academies as a result of honor violations is small and has decreased appreciably in recent years. This is not to imply that men and women are necessarily more honorable now than previously, but it does indicate that the academies have heard the criticisms and are taking a closer look at their honor codes and how they are administered. (The Air Force Academy is currently carrying out a major revision of its honor system. The degree and impact of this change is not yet known.)

The use of attrition figures can also be misleading. There is no demonstrable correlation between attrition rates and the degree of strictness or laxity at the academies (in Lovell’s jargon, whether the Spartan or Athenian influence is ascendant). The reasons cadets give for resigning are varied and defy neat, categorical analysis. Moreover, I think it is important to realize it is not desirable that all cadets/midshipmen graduate. Some individuals are not suited for the military life although they may have unusual or exceptional talents in other areas. To take steps to ensure that the majority of cadets/midshipmen graduate and obtain a commission would not be in the nation’s best interest. Any program so easy or agreeable that it takes no effort or causes no hardship will not produce the kinds of leaders necessary in the stress of combat. It will always be difficult to measure the effectiveness of a military academy. But attempting to derive cost-effectiveness figures based on the cost of educating each cadet/midshipman and such factors as attrition rates before and after graduation, GRE scores, numbers of scholarships and the like are a contrivance. They will not determine the outcome of the next conflict and should be treated only as a reference, not as a standard.

The problems with this book, however, lie more with its research than its conclusions and proposals. As a graduate and former instructor at the Air Force Academy, I will comment primarily on the author’s historical account of that school.

Lovell’s research is based largely on newspaper and magazine articles, official histories, and oral interviews. Primary documents in the Academy files and archives were largely ignored. For example, Lovell contends there were athletic recruiting violations in 1955 and 1965 at the Air Force Academy. He maintains, based on an interview he conducted with a former dean, General McDermott, that preadmission evaluation scores were changed in the Registrar’s office to allow academically deficient athletes to qualify and enter the Academy. But there is no evidence to support this explosive claim. The proof for this allegation, if it exists, would probably be in the Registrar’s files or Academy archives; which apparently Lovell did not examine. He also maintains that the uncovering of these violations in 1965 resulted in an investigation launched by Lieutenant General William S. Stone, a former superintendent who was then in the Pentagon. This investigation supposedly resulted in the removal from office of the incumbent superintendent and commandant.

However, there is no mention of such an investigation in Academy records, and none of the key participants involved were contacted by Lovell to confirm or deny the allegation. In an oral history interview conducted in 1979, General Robert W. Strong, Jr., the Commandant involved, maintained that the story was a fabrication.

Another incident discussed by the author that merits further investigation is the 1965 honor incident at the Academy. Lovell’s account relies heavily on information provided him by a former dean; the superintendent and commandant were not contacted for their accounts. This omission is of importance because an oral history interview conducted with that commandant by the Air Force Academy Department of History in 1979 differs substantially, not only in the believed causes of the incident but also how it was discovered, investigated, and, most important, how and why it was terminated. Another interview conducted with the director of athletics involved gives yet another perspective. In short, the last word on the 1965 "scandal" is yet to be written; the author’s lopsided account does little but muddy already murky waters.

This incident points up another of the book’s flaws, the interviews (or lack of them) conducted by the author. Although he purports to be presenting a balanced view of the academies, it is in fact one-sided. He briefly spoke to only one superintendent. Although he blithely comments that the role of the commandant "can be important," he did not interview any of the ten men who have held that position. He also charges recruiting violations concerning athletes and overemphasis on football, but he did not contact any of the six former athletic directors. The result of this inexcusable deficiency—most of the men neglected are still available for comment—is a continued skewing toward the academic, or "Athenian," point of view.

There are also many minor factual errors in the book that indicate careless research and editing. Basically, however, the book’s main flaw is that its scope is too ambitious. Lovell has attempted to summarize the histories and experiences of four institutions that are geographically, chronologically, and ideologically separated. He then attempts to draw analogies and conclusions from these scattered histories. In the best of circumstances this would be a difficult and demanding task. But this problem is compounded because there are no adequate general histories of the academies that Lovell could draw upon. A book of this kind needs a strong foundation already extant that can be expanded and improved. Since this foundation does not exist, Lovell’s first step was to build it himself; his efforts have been only partially successful.

Thus, the book falls short of the mark even though his issues are timely and important. The mission and operation of the service academies do need to be examined in detail; problems do exist and have for some time, but this book does not provide the solutions. The research necessary to write a quality book simply was not done. Consequently, the definitive work on the American military academies has yet to be written.

Contributor

Joe P. Dunn (B.S., Southeast Missouri State University; M.A., Ph.D., University of Missouri) is Assistant Professor of History and Politks at Converse College. His writing has focused on the Vietnam War and on post-World War II conscription. Dr. Dunn has published articles in Parameters, Pandora, Military Review, Teaching History, Proceedings of the South Carolina Historical Association, and Air University Review.

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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