June 30, 2023–In recent years, the west has been threatened by what it sees as China’s increasingly hegemonic approach and information-technology penetrations, and in retaliation, is countering with defense buildup and economic sanctions. Is China an ultimate threat to the world? The west’s policy toward China and its leader Xi Jinping is wrong, says a long-time anti-war China expert.
Whereas many in the west started wars, China did not. It was Japan that invaded China in the run-up to World War II by forming the puppet Manchurian government of Aisingioro Pu I as the last Chinese emperor. Germany invaded the European Continent under Adolf Hitler. The United States went to Vietnam and more recently Afghanistan. China did not militarily intervene in other countries in the modern era.
Yet China has been expanding its reach geographically and culturally: It has build an airstrip built in the Spratly Islands claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, Brunei and China; Hong Kong, formerly a British colony, is now under full Chinese government administration, with anti-China activists jailed; it is imposing curfews and severe restrictions against the Uyghurs of the Xinjiang autonomous region; and its murky borders with Russia now have more Chinese residents and soldiers. Chinese workers and tourists are all over the world visiting world-famous spots and spending money, and cooking Chinese dishes for locals and building railways and other structures.
Then there is the Taiwan issue at the center of all problems related to Beijing: China and its leader Xi Jinping, expressing resolve to take over the island economy by 2027, are sending its fighter aircraft, naval fleets and coast guard vessels daily to intimidate the island and neighboring countries, including Korea and Japan. Japan’s Senkaku Islands is one of the targets being harassed.
Rodger Scott, a pro-China long-time anti-war activist based in San Francisco, recently told me that the U.S. strategy of ‘surrounding your enemy’ would divide the two countries to a dangerous point of destruction.
Scott thinks that whatever the west does to staunch the technology flow or sensitive material exports to China, it doesn’t work, as other countries, both pro- and neutral to China, function as intermediaries for China’s imports. He also thinks that China’s sunshine diplomatic policy is superior to that of the United States in garnering support from countries in distress and in need.
He definitely sounds too naive in this divided world where the powerful and smart rule but seems to give us some food for thought to make it a more comfortable place.
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Rodger K. Scott
I’m very troubled by and militantly opposed to the U.S. plan to send nuclear-armed submarines to South Korea. I believe that plan will inevitably increase tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula and bring the world closer to a nuclear confrontation. This plan also reveals that the United States is preparing for war with China. Sending nuclear submarines to South Korea and interfering in the internal affairs of China on the issue of Taiwan continuing as a province of China or a sovereign nation whose independence the U.S. has promised to defend militarily if necessary are both dangerous and provocative acts that peace-loving nations and people throughout the world oppose.
I commend the organizers of the recent conference at American University to reform U.S. interventionist foreign policy in Latin America by abolishing the Monroe Doctrine. My two-year experience in the Peace Corps was directly affected by the bloody, inhumane consequences of that policy. I joined the Peace Corps in August, 1963 and was selected to serve in a teacher-training program in the Dominican Republic; however, in the fall of 1963, about two weeks before our academic training at East Los Angeles State College ended, a right-wing military junta overthrew democratically elected President Juan Bosh, who was regarded as an honest and highly respected leader. Those of us who had been selected to work in teacher training were given the choice of going to the Dominican Republic as part of the Community Action Program or to Bogota, Colombia in an Educational Television Program. I chose the latter and our group received a two-week crash-training program of 14-hour days in producing educational television programs.
The Peace Corps administration, however, informed us shortly after we arrived in Bogota in December, 1963 that we weren’t needed in educational television and would be assigned to teach English as a Second Language at Colombian universities. That was my assignment until my service ended in July, 1965.
Bob Zech, one of my roommates in the Peace Corps academic training phase at East Los Angeles State College, came to visit me in Bogota. Bob had gone to the Dominican Republic in the Community Action Program around the end of November, 1973. My friends in Bogota found it interesting that he spoke Spanish fluently with a prominent Puerto Rican accent. He was the son of a German-American missionary of the Lutheran church and had received all of his education in Puerto Rican missionary and public schools. Bob wrote me several letters after that visit but I never saw him again.
The corrupt and brutal right-wing junta ruled the country from September, 1963 until April 24, 1965, when young, progressive military officers led a popular rebellion; however President Lyndon Johnson sent U.S. Marines 4 days later to abort the rebellion. Peace Corps volunteers involved in Community Action reported that they strongly supported the popular rebellion and that many volunteers worked as couriers for the rebels. I was surprised and pleased by those reports since some of those Peace Corps volunteers had called me a “pinko” in Peace Corps training classes because I expressed admiration for the revolutions in Cuba and the People’s Republic of China. I also spoke Spanish fluently and got along well with other volunteers and the staff and faculty training us. People who disagreed with my political views often added that they liked me better than my politics. That group also included my friend and former roommate Bob Zech.
The people in the Dominican Republic overwhelmingly supported the insurrectionists and were outraged by the invading U.S. Marines and 82nd Airborne. A letter from one of Bob Zech’s friends described the auto accident that took his life: In Santo Domingo a taxi driver saw another taxi with 3 young people he took to be Americans in the back seat, then increased his speed and rammed the Taxi, killing all three passengers: Bob and the couple, who were also Peace Corps volunteers. A second account I found online was different: Six Peace Corps volunteers were returning to Santo Domingo in a van and a military jeep hit the van in a head-on collision, killing Bob and another volunteer and wounding several others. The online source also reported that 42,000 U.S. Marines and Paratroopers killed 2,000 rebel soldiers and 1,000 civilians—and 44 U.S. troops were killed and 283 were wounded. A second letter from a Community-Action volunteer informed me that one of the Peace Corps volunteers who was working as a courier for the rebel forces had been so severely traumatized by the invading U.S. forces’ attacks on Dominican military forces and civilians that he was sent to a psychiatric facility. I believe his last name was Early and that he had called me a “pinko” in our classes at East Los Angeles State College.
I was saddened and outraged by the news of Bob Zech’s death and the bloody U.S. intervention to abort a popular rebellion to oust the oppressive military junta that had overthrown Juan Bosch, the progressive, democratically elected president, to avoid a “Communist Takeover” in the Dominican Republic. I decided to organize a protest at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota. Another American, Owen Lopez (who was not in the Peace Corps but was a friend and colleague of Revolutionary Theologian Camilo Torres, who had been killed a few months before by Colombian troops in the northern mountains of Colombia) and 10 Colombians joined me. Most of them were students at the University of Colombia, where Torres had been a highly respected Professor of Sociology.
We started the protest on the sidewalk in front of the U.S. Embassy. Around 15 Colombian soldiers with automatic weapons stood at parade rest in front of the entrance. We had placards in English and Spanish, denouncing the armed intervention of a sovereign country: PEACE CORPS–NOT MARINE CORPS IN LATIN AMERICA, SANTO DOMINGO IS A SOVEREIGN COUNTRY, NO INTERVENTION IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, SUPPORT DEMOCRACY NOT A FASCIST MILITARY JUNTA, STOP KILLING THE DOMINICAN PEOPLE, THE U.S. SUPPORTS FASCIST TRAITORS, THE WORLD SAYS STOP THE KILLING.
After marching up and down the picket line for 15 minutes some of us tried to open the door of the Embassy. The troops allowed us to knock on the door, but it was locked. Press from Colombian newspapers took photographs and conducted brief interviews but the coverage was minimal and didn’t mention that any one was a Peace Corps volunteer. My naïve hope was that a demonstration by Peace Corps volunteers would generate some international coverage.
After the demonstration, we crammed the people and placards into a sputtering station wagon made in East Germany and drove to the University of Colombia. The entrance had an archway with a message in large red letters: CAMILO NO TE LLORAMOS PERO TE VENGAMOS. After he was killed by the Colombian troops with other revolutionaries, the Colombian government kept that operation and Torres’ killing secret for several months. There was speculation that U.S. advisors directed or participated in the operation.
We spoke with some of the leaders of a large demonstration who welcomed us and invited us to speak about the demonstration in front of the Embassy. I stepped forward and the speaker, who probably shared the view of most Colombian progressives that Colombia didn’t need Los Cuerpitos de Paz (as they referred to us) to bring social and economic justice to their country. The Colombians I knew demanded an end to U.S. intervention in Latin America and the pillaging of their natural resources. The students thanked us for protesting the bloody U.S. intervention in Santo Domingo and hoped the international press would cover our protest.
I tried to express in Spanish that I concurred that the Peace Corps was a form of U.S. cultural imperialism but that the Peace Corps volunteers in the Dominican Republic that I had trained with recognized that the intervention was totally wrong in supporting the fascistic enemies of the people; also that many Peace Corps volunteers supported the progressive rebels, including serving as couriers for the heroic rebel forces. I also pointed out the parallels between the intervention in Santo Domingo and the Vietnam War and that more than 500,000 U.S. troops were destroying Vietnam to prevent a “Communist takeover.”
The Peace Corps leaders didn’t appear to know about the Embassy demonstration until the State Department informed them that Owen Lopez and I had been boasting of that effort to friends at the Colombo-American Center. Bill Rodgers, the assistant director of the Peace Corps office in Bogota, didn’t express any criticism of the action, in part maybe because my service was scheduled to end in two months and any punishment would certainly have been covered by the press.
In preparation for the protest, I recalled the presentation of a distinguished Swedish political scientist to our group during the academic training at East Los Angeles State University. He lamented the Cold War between the two super powers and the complex implications of the many forms of imperialism. In the question-and-answer session after the lecture, one of the volunteers asked him:
“What do you think about the Soviet enslavement of Eastern Europe?” He responded: “I have a problem with the term ‘enslavement’ but I am opposed to all forms of imperialism; however, since you are an American, I would think you should be more concerned about what your country has done—and continues to do—in Latin America. You have such a long history of intervention, including armed invasion and exploitation of their vast natural resources.” This exchange occurred a few days after the U.S.-backed military junta had overthrown Juan Bosch, the democratically elected president of the Dominican Republic.
I’m very much encouraged by the current role the People’s Republic of China is playing on the international diplomatic scene. The PRC is also playing an important role in trying to end the war in Ukraine, including the 12-Point Peace Plan and the recent telephone call from President Xi to President Zelensky. China has also worked effectively in the important efforts to bring together and re-establish relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran. These efforts should help in solving the terrible humanitarian crisis in Yemen, and this kind of enlightened negotiation presents evidence that complex, intractable struggles can be resolved through good-faith negotiation and mutual respect of the negotiators. China also deserves commendation and support for the offer to assist in negotiating the long Israeli-Palestinian struggle. I also support the efforts of China, India, Brazil, and South Africa to create a multipolar community of nations to replace the unipolar U.S. -dominated Community of nations that has existed since the end of World War Two. In my view, major nations like India, Brazil, and South Africa have been denied the decision-making roles that they have deserved in modern history. I believe the shift from a uni-polar U.S.-dominated community of nations to a Multi-polar community of nations would be more successful in settling disputes through negotiation as opposed to interventionist wars and occupation. This global transformation could also lead toward a more democratic and just international monetary system that would replace the U.S. dollar as the world currency.
I am convinced the United States must reform our foreign policy in significant ways, including stopping the interventionist wars and occupation that have proliferated since the end of World War II. Dr. Marc Selden, the late and distinguished China scholar of Cornell University, commended the heroic role of the United States in helping to defeat Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany; however, he added: “Since the end of the Second World War, the United States has committed more war crimes than any other nation on earth.” We must also stop, I believe, the U.S. consistent support of the Apartheid Israeli state’s inhumane treatment of the Palestinian people and U.S. efforts to prepare for war against China.
The United States and China are not enemies. Both countries need to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of one another and collaborate with mutual respect and positive ties to lead the world in solving the problems that threaten all of humanity: nuclear destruction, global warming and various forms of environmental degradation. We also need to work together to eliminate the racial, social and economic justice inequities that divide and threaten us—and have impoverished most of the world. I believe the Biden administration’s preparation for war with China increases the chance of that war occurring and the dangerous, provocative decision to send nuclear submarines to South Korea and the belligerent statement to defend Taiwan militarily if necessary send a signal that the United States regards China as an enemy.
I concur with some of the world’s best minds in the United States and throughout the world that surrounding Russia by expanding NATO to thousands of miles of the Russian border has been a significant cause of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and that U.S. efforts to contain and prepare for war against China are comparably belligerent and dangerous.
Ex-President Trump’s description of the Covid Pandemic as the “Chinese Communist virus” and absurd, comparably xenophobic statements by other ignorant Americans in high places have contributed to the increase in Asian hate crimes and anti-China sentiment. President Biden’s policy of preparation for war with China and the increasing U.S. military presence in East Asia revive the anachronistic military strategy of “surrounding your enemy,” which is intended to divide two great nations of the world rather than unite us when humanity is facing threats of destruction.
For most of my adult life I’ve worked with anti-war, civil and human rights activists in the struggle for social and economic justice. I have learned valuable lessons from those remarkable people. They are ordinary workers, as ordinary as snow in the first light of morning or stars on a summer night, and they know that the world’s greatest threats can be solved by the international solidarity of the working people who understand and practice the Golden Rule of economics: Treat others as you would have them treat you. They also tell us by word and deed the following: “I know the history of my people and I respect our heritage, but I know that my people are neither better nor worse than the rest of humanity. We’re simply links in that long human chain.” They are telling us to listen to the billions of people across the globe who are saying stop the war in Ukraine, stop the expansion of NATO, and stop the preparation for war against China.
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