REFLECTIONS ON THE USE OF FORCE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP83M00914R002300070003-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 17
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Sequence Number: 3
• Content Type: REPORT

proved For Rele
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2100 M STREET, N.W.
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20037
Q?J
Uoc~ l C~nC' (F C) ?
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I have been asked to provide some reflections on the use of
force in Southeast Asia. I could be very succinct and say that
there is only one country in Southeast Asia that can effectively
project force in the area--Vietnam--a-nd then sit down. But I am
afraid the sponsors of this conference would not be too happy
with such a performance after providing an expensive plane
ticket.
What I propose to do, therefore, is to take 15 minutes or so
and survey the Southeast Asian scene since the communist takeover
of Indochina in 1975. I will make some general statements about
the use of force, or really more about war and violence in the
area and their sources in the recent past. I will then make some
judgments about what looks likely for the rest of the decade.
First, and certainly most obvious, is that war and
hostilities remain an omnipresent feature of Southeast Asia. The
fall of Saigon clearly did not resolve the Indochina problem. We
have seen a border war between two communist countries-- Vietnam
and Cambodia--transformed into a full-scale Vietnamese invasion
and occupation of Cambodia. This in turn led to brief but fierce
multidivisional hostilities between Vietnam and China and a c.
guerrilla war on the Thai-Cambodian border, which still eont!'`~3ues
after two years.
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Violence is also internal--all the countries of Southeast
Asia with the exception of Singapore confront some form of
insurgent hostilities. Even the Indochinese states have their
insurgencies, the most protracted being in Laos. In none of the
Southeast Asian states does insurgency pose any real threat to
the established order at this time. In two states--Burma and the
Philippines--important minorities seek some significant degree of
autonomy or, in the case of some Burmese insurgents,
independence from the central government. I will have more to
say about this subject later.
The final type of hostilities over the past seven years may
be considered a remnant of European decolonialization or a bit of
Asian imperialism, depending on one's perspective. I refer to
the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. The war there has
devolved after six years into a low-level guerrilla war which has
almost petered out. It excites a certain amount of concern in
the U.S. Congress and in Australia, but that interest has little
impact on what has been the absorption of Portuguese Timor into
Indonesia. In actuality, Timor's location is such that one
wonders why the Indonesians did not do it sooner and why their
effort has taken so long.
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The second broad statement I would make is that nationalism
remains an integral element of the sources of violence in
Southeast Asia. Nationalism perhaps does not have the fervor of
anticolonialist days, but it remains an important motivating
agent. Ethnic, religious, and ideological rivalries often
intensify nationalist passion and help to shape threat
perspectives. It is not easy to sort these factors out. What,
after all, is the source of hostilities in Indochina? One could
quite correctly characterize the conflict as a struggle for
control of the communist party of Cambodia, in other words
another case of Sino-Soviet rivalry. However, much of the direct
cause of recent fighting is fierce Cambodian nationalism, more
specifically the rather bizarre military. behavior--given its
relative weakness vis-a-vis Vietnam--of the Pol Pot government in
1977 and 1978 in handling its border dispute with Hanoi. And
similarly, what is the source of Vietnamese-Chinese rivalry? It
is far more complicated than ideological differences. One of my
most vivid recollections of three years of dealing with
Vietnamese officials, including the Foreign Minister, has been
their invariable transformation when they discuss the Chinese and
their iniquities. Their voices change and a mystical fervor
takes possession of them. Clearly the hostility between Chinese
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and Vietnamese is profound and wrapped inextricably in
historical, ethnic, and nationalist causes.
In less dramatic form, these types of animosities are at the
root of the insurgencies in Burma, the Philippines, and
Malaysia. These insurgencies are deep-seated and are thus
difficult to resolve, even with the most sensitive and
progressive of governments. The differing ASEAN perceptions of
Vietnamese and Chinese threats to the region--principally between
Thailand on the one hand and Indonesia on the other--lie perhaps
as much in Indonesia's phobia of its influential Chinese minority
as in its distance from Vietnam.
As a third general statement, I would say that while the
impact of the powers in Southeast Asian violence has declined
with the American defeat in Vietnam, the great power element
remains a major factor in force considerations. The Vietnamese
could not continue their military activities throughout Indochina
nor the Khmer Rouge guerrillas their war against Vietnam without
Soviet and Chinese material support. It was the alliance with
the Soviets that permitted the Vietenamese to invade Cambodia
with some confidence in the protection of rear. And it was
direct Chinese intervention in Vietnam which helped preserve the
existence of the Khmer Rouge. The threat of direct Chinese
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intervention serves as a major deterrent to any Vietnamese
interest in crossing into Thailand to destroy the Khmer Rouge.
Similarly, Thailand's willingness to offer refuge to the
Cambodian guerrillas and to help build an anti-Vietnamese
Cambodian coalition is intimately related to its being able to
count on U.S. and Chinese sympathy and support. In a lesser
vein, the battles against domestic insurgencies in most of the
noncommunist countries are largely fought with U.S. arms.
Direct U.S.-Soviet confrontation has been absent despite
Cambodia. The United States has been very circumspect about
involving itself again with force in Southeast Asia. Witness its
caution on the Cambodian issue in even any display of force in
Thailand. It has limited itself to support of ASEAN positions,
including economic warfare against Vietnam. The only direct U.S.
force involvement is confined to its long-standing bases in the
Philippines. The one new super-power involvement has been the
development of Soviet facilities at Cam Ranh Bay. So far that
use has been limited to intelligence, surveillence, R&R, and
minor repairs of vessels. How far the Soviets want to go is
uncertain. How far the highly nationalistic Vietnamese will let
them go is also uncertain. All this is quite naturally a matter
of concern to the U.S., particularly the Navy. It may also have
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a significant long-term political impact in the area, but its
political benefits for the Soviets in the area to date have been
negative. However, as long as Sino-Vietnamese hostility does not
abate, not much can be done about the Soviet military presence.
My fourth generalization is that internal insurgencies have
failed, and with possibly one exception their prospects are
poor. The American obsession of the sixties has not come to
pass. Some of these insurgencies go back to the early years
after World War II, and in every country the insurgents have
barely hung on, even in Burma. Despite Burma's inglorious record
on economic development, the Burmese army still keeps the country
unified. It has to engage in constant battle, but the insurgents
remain in the boondocks. All the noncommunist Southeast Asian
countries have succeeded in their efforts largely on their own,
although they have had foreign, usually U.S., economic and
military aid. Indeed, in the case of Thailand, government
efforts to deal with %problem improved
~C~a o
when the U.S. got out of the insurgency business in Thailand. It
is somewhat incredible to recall that in the early seventies the
U.S. had 13 branch USIS posts throughout Thailand trying to help
Thai farmers resist communist ideological encroachments. The
U.S. does many things well; one it generally doesn't do well is
to build successful political structures abroad.
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Related to the failure of the insurgencies, but not to be
overstressed, is the decline in Chinese interest and involvement
in them--a downplaying of the wars of national liberation. The
West and the U.S. clearly overreacted to this Chinese ideological
initiative--embodied most vividly in a Lin Piao speech--giving it
too great a global perspective. But the appeal and effectiveness
of wars of national liberation has diminished for two other
reasons. First have been the obvious failures of
Vietnamese and Chinese communism--China during the Cultural
Revolution and Vietnam since the boat people--and the impact
these failures have had on potentially dissident forces in
Southeast Asian countries. The second has been China's own
playing down of the concept, given its desire to improve its
relations with the countries of Southeast Asia. Chinese policy
is, of course, a result of the Sino-Soviet dispute and the
Chinese break with Vietnam. A good example of the impact of
Sino-Vietnamese rivalry has been the blow-dealt the Chinese-
dominated communist party of Thailand with the Lao eviction of
the Thai communists from their sanctuaries in Laos. The struggle
between the Chinese and Vietnamese has also helped decimate
political fervor among the insurgent leadership.
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The one.country where insurgent prospects at the present
seem more favorable is the Philippines. The Philippine
government clearly remains dominant, but it has taken significant
casualties in Mindanao against Moslem insurgents in a rebellion
in part fueled by a new type of external agent. The New
People's Army has also made gains over the past few years.
Experienced observers disagree on the potential of the NPA. The
situation is a matter of concern, but clearly far from
critical. NPA gains can still be easily reversed.
There is one aspect of Southeast Asia that relates to
internal insurgencies and helps assure their continuation, and
that is what might be called the porousness of borders. All the
mainland Southeast Asian countries have long borders marked by
difficult terrain. They are very hard for governments to
police. While this makes external invasion unlikely, it also
simplifies the life of insurgents. They can more easily get the
small volume of supplies they need and they can readily find
refuge. I have witnessed this most graphically in three years of
effort trying to diminish the opium trade in the Golden Triangle
by eliminating the bandit gangs that dominate portions of the
Thai-Burmese border.
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My fifth generalization is that the growth of ASEAN has
diminished the impact of regional quarrels and rivalries. I am
not one who believes that ASEAN- is the millennium arrived in
Southeast Asia. ASEAN still has a distance to travel in
developing a sustained regional consensus and cohesion. But it
has come a long way, and while much of its recent vigor is a
result of the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, there has been a
real growth in regional consciousness and an awareness among the
ASEAN states that together they have an influence that transcends
most (but not all) bilateral relations. This ASEAN consciousness,
while not ending quarrels such as that between Malaysia and the
Philippines, clearly is important in damping them down and
reducing the possibility that they will lead to conflict.
Similarly, steps toward military cooperation on some sort of
regional basis have been taken which, while outside the ASEAN
framework, have been abetted by the growth of ASEAN. This
conflict-reducing function of ASEAN is at least one reason that
it may be desirable to have Vietnam within ASEAN one day. That
day is distant. Ideological and other considerations override
any such consideration and may legitimately do so for a lengthy
period. But clearly there are important long-term benefits from
such a development if there are changes within Vietnam.
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My sixth and final general observation is that despite the
widespread use of violence and the frequent resort to arms, there
has not been in the countries of the area, with the exception of
Vietnam, a significant diversion of resource to the military and
away from economic development. Defense financing ranges from
one or two percent of GNP to at most five percent. Even
Thailand, which since 1979 found itself in a totally new security
situation with the presence of 100 thousand Vietnamese troops on
its border, did not embark on any major new defense efforts.
Whatever the reason, in those Southeast Asian states dominated by
the military, the accumulation of arms has not become an end in
itself. All this at least indicates a healthy realism within
ASEAN.
Those are some of the conclusions I draw from looking at the
record of the past decade.
What can we say about force and its likely employment in
the decade of the eighties? Let me preface my comments by saying
that caution is very much in order. Most people were wrong in
their predictions about the course of events in Southeast Asia
following the fall of Saigon. I remember my own quarrel with the
U.S. intelligence community in late 1978 when, after the signing
of the Vietnamese-Soviet mutual defense agreement, their
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prediction was for more intensive border hostilities between
Vietnam and Cambodia. It is of course easy to project the
present into the future.
Nevertheless, while insurgencies will unquestionably
continue, I think the prospects of significant and protracted
hostilities among or between Southeast Asian states are low. For
that to occur, we must see major political change within the
states or much greater U.S. or Soviet involvement in the area.
More fundamentally, with the. exception of Vietnam, none of the
states can much project power beyond its borders, and that cannot
change much in this decade. Only Singapore--a Chinese island in
a Malay sea--is vulnerable to attack by an ASEAN partner. In the
case of Vietnam, whatever its ultimate intent in the region, it
clearly has far more on its platter right now than it desires.
Its economy will remain under great stress for a long time; the
society has lost much of its elan, and its overextension in Laos
and Cambodia bids to continue. It abhors its international
isolation. To undertake any serious military effort beyond
Cambodia would be an undertaking both difficult logistically and
utterly dependent upon Soviet backing, which in itself is highly
questionable. It would also be extremely unpredictable in its
regional consequences. The cautious Vietnamese military behavior
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on the Thai border over the past three years shows that Vietnam
at least now has no interest in such adventures, whether it has
them at all.
Secondly, the major source of conflict in the area will be
between the communist states, and its likely location is in the
communist states. Without political change either in Hanoi or
Peking, or the unlikely submission of one to the other, their
hostility will continue at a high intensity. China has not
changed its policy of bleeding Vietnam in the expectation that
this will eventually produce political change in Hanoi. It will
continue its support to the Khmer Rouge guerrilla effort. The
Vietnamese cannot eliminate the Khmer Rouge unless they choose to
go into Thailand, something they have resisted so far.
The second area of possible Chinese pressure on Vietnam is
Laos. Laos is an economic basket case and a burden to Vietnam.
Laotian forces are vulnerable and could well have difficulty
dealing with existing Lao insurgents without the help of
Vietnamese forces in Laos. The Chinese have been training some
Lao and Hmong insurgents but information about all this is very
sketchy at best. It is not easy to develop an effective Lao or
Hmong resistance. Whatever Chinese efforts are to date, the
results so far have not been impressive.
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Let me add a small parenthesis: the notion of Vietnam
facing protracted guerrilla war on two fronts with insurgents who
get external support and have external sanctuaries has a certain
poetic justice.
The Cambodian problem must be approached with a caveat to
our first prediction. Cambodia is the one area that we cannot
rule out major escalation--a sustained Vietnamese incursion over
the Thai border or renewed Chinese-Vietnamese hostilities. None
of these developments appear likely to me now. The Vietnamese
dominate Cambodia and there is little chance of the Khmer Rouge
or the newly formed anti-Vietnamese Cambodian coalition changing
the fundamental situation on the ground. Nevertheless, despite
all the constraints to a sustained Vietnamese incursion into
Thailand, we cannot rule out Vietnamese exasperation with
incessant harassment.
Nor do Sino-Vietnamese hostilities seem likely, without some
further acts to change the present scene by the Vietnamese. The
Chinese keep tied down a considerable Vietnamese military effort
in Northern Vietnam, but they have shown no interest in
undertaking any second lesson. They have reduced forces along
the border. The costs of any attack would be enormous. Peking
will likely stick to the Khmer Rouge as their desired instrument
of change in Indochina.
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Nor is there much basis to expect increased Soviet-U.S.
confrontation in the area. The U.S. has shown no intent in
turning ASEAN into an anti-Soviet military bastion. The Soviets'
principal interest is to maintain a level of Chinese-Vietnamese
hostilities. Hostilities between them in the area would, in the
absence of major political change in the area, have to result
from conflict elsewhere. The uncertainties of additional
military competition as distinct from the use of force relate to
greater Soviet military use of Vietnam and deepened American
concern with a Persian Gulf conflict leading toward renewed use
of some former facilities in Thailand.
I believe a direct Chinese military threat to Southeast
Asia has always been a vast exaggeration. Chinese ability to
project force southward is very limited, and they have never
shown any such intention to do so. Their skirmish with Vietnam
was not for expansionist purposes and was not a glorious one.
This does not mean that in the distant future after considerable
force modernization that situation may not change. Certainly
such a prospect, rightly or wrongly, worries such states as
Indonesia, which would welcome a strong Vietnamese buffer between
them and China.
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Another potential source of conflict arises from disputed
claims to areas with mineral and other resources. The Spratly
Islands are a good example, and there are other disputed areas.
While these conflicts are taken deadly seriously by the countries
concerned, the potential for conflict can be overdrawn. Many
have pointed to this problem for years but little has occurred.
The parties themselves are cautious in pursuing their claims,
recognizing the implication of the disputes. Moreover, serious
military action would require sizable improvement in their power
projection capabilities. The areas of greatest concern are those
where Vietnam is involved, particularly with China. In the cases
of disputed territory within ASEAN the mechanism appears to be in
-place or on the way to limit the likelihood of such disputes
degenerating into hostilities.
There is one perhaps wild card, and that is Islam. I refer
to the possibility of fundamentalist Muslem activity leading to
political change in Malaysia, and less likely in Indonesia, which
could generate threats to the integrity of Singapore, the
Philippines, and Thailand. I do not feel particularly confident
in discussing this subject. But from what I have seen, the
prospects for such a development are limited. In both states
strong secular-leaning governments are in charge and determined
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to pursue moderate racial and religious policies. A faltering
economy could conceivably change this picture, but it would be
very rash to predict any such development.
That is the picture as I see it. Violence remains endemic
in Southeast Asia but, unlike the past three decades, it does not
bid to be very important.