RN

by Richard Nixon

  I met President Rhee the next day. He was a thin, small man wearing a dark blue suit and a dark blue tie. His firm handshake and spry walk belied his seventy-eight years. After some general conversation I said that I had some matters I would like to discuss with him personally. He nodded, and everyone else left the room.

  Rhee studied me with a penetrating gaze while I told him that I was not only a representative of Eisenhower but someone who had a long and consistent record as a friend of Korea. I took Eisenhower’s letter from my jacket and handed it to him. He held it gingerly with his fingers, almost as if he were weighing it.

  With slow and deliberate movements he opened the envelope and unfolded the letter. In an even voice he read it aloud. In dignified but unmistakable language, Eisenhower made it clear that the United States would not tolerate any actions that might lead to a reopening of war and asked for specific reassurances from Rhee.

  When he reached the end Rhee put the letter in his lap and stared down at it without saying anything. When he looked up his eyes were glistening with tears. “That is a very fine letter,” he said.

  Then he began to talk as if the letter did not exist. He described his attitude toward Japan; he talked about the future of Asia and the Pacific basin; he criticized the way we had administered the economic aid program. I tried to avoid pressing him too hard, but I finally brought him back to a discussion of the letter and of the assurances Eisenhower wanted. I said that I was speaking frankly to him because I thought it was of the highest urgency that he understand Eisenhower’s position and make the commitment the President had requested in his letter.

  “I too want to speak frankly to you,” Rhee replied. “I am deeply appreciative of the aid my country has received from the United States and of my personal relationship with President Eisenhower. Because of this friendship I would not want to do anything that would not be in accord with the policies of the United States. On the other hand, I must think of Korea and, particularly, of the three million enslaved Koreans in the North. My obligation as a leader of the Korean people is to achieve unification of our country by peaceful means if possible but by force if necessary.”

  He paused. Then, as he continued, he ran his finger along the creases of the letter in his lap.

  “I understand why the United States is anxious to maintain peace, and I am in basic agreement with that objective,” he said. “But on the other hand a peace which leaves Korea divided would inevitably lead to a war which would destroy both Korea and the United States and I cannot agree to such a peace.”

  Suddenly he leaned toward me. “I pledge to you that before I take any unilateral action at any time I shall inform President Eisenhower first.”

  This was hardly the assurance Eisenhower had asked for, and I said firmly that it was essential for him to understand that under no circumstances should he take any action except by mutual agreement with Eisenhower. The meeting ended on this inconclusive note.

  When I returned to the embassy I made extensive notes of our conversation. I had felt uncomfortable going as far as I did, but I knew that my mission would be a failure if because of any reticence or ineptness on my part, Rhee did not understand that the United States would not support any unilateral military attempt he might undertake to reunite his country.

  My uncertainty increased the next day when Rhee told an interviewer, “I hope I will be able to convince President Eisenhower, through Vice President Nixon, that it is the right policy to finish this thing in Korea.”

  On the last night of our visit, Pat and I were the guests of honor at a show of Korean dancing and music. Midway through the performance there was a sharp crack, and the wooden platform at the back of the stage, on which a children’s choir was standing, began to collapse. The audience gasped. When the children realized what was happening, they began screaming and crying.

  Within a minute it was clear that no one had been hurt, and the audience’s concern for the children’s safety gave way to embarrassment that such a thing should have happened at a performance honoring foreign visitors. I knew that throughout the Far East, to lose face is the worst humiliation. It seemed as if Korea had lost face in this incident. The conductor threw up his hands and walked off the stage in embarrassment.

  I suddenly thought of a way to rescue the evening from disaster. I jumped up from my seat and began to applaud. Pat saw what I was doing and immediately followed my lead. One by one, and then in larger groups, the audience joined us, and the applause grew louder and louder. The children, who had been frightened and then embarrassed by the accident, responded to the applause and began to smile. Finally the conductor returned, and the show went on.

  When I paid a farewell call on Rhee the next day, he was very warm and friendly; I have no doubt he had been told about the incident with the choir. When we settled down alone again to talk, he took two pages of thin paper from his jacket. As he unfolded them, he said that he had typed them himself to ensure complete security. “The moment the Communists are certain that the United States controls Rhee,” he said, “you will have lost one of your most effective bargaining points, and we will have lost all our hope. The fear that I may start some action is a constant check on the Communists. We are being very frank now, you and I, so you should know that the Communists think that America wants peace so badly that you will do anything to get it. At times, I am afraid that they are right. But they do not think that this is true as far as I am concerned, and I believe that you would be wrong to dispel their doubts in that respect. I shall send my reply to President Eisenhower’s letter when you are in Tokyo tomorrow. I would like it to be delivered to President Eisenhower personally and then destroyed once he has seen it.”

  He handed me the notes he had been reading from and said, “You may want to use these in preparing your report of our meeting.” At the end was an addition in his own handwriting: “Too much newspaper reports say Rhee has promised not to act independently. Such impression is not in line with our propaganda idea.” As we shook hands at the door of his office, he said, “Any statements I have made about Korea acting independently were made to help America. In my heart I know that Korea cannot possibly act alone. We must act together with America. We realize that we will get everything as long as we travel together, and that we will lose everything if we do not.”

  I left Korea impressed by the courage and endurance of its people, and by the strength and intelligence of Syngman Rhee. I also gave much thought to Rhee’s insight about the importance of being unpredictable in dealing with the Communists. The more I traveled and the more I learned in the years that followed, the more I appreciated how wise the old man had been.

  Pat and I were Japan’s first state guests since World War II. Everywhere we went in Japan we were cheered enthusiastically by hundreds of thousands who lined our motorcade routes. Those people were demonstrating a deep feeling I shared: that the war had been a tragedy and the time had come to re-establish the tradition of Japanese-American friendship that had previously existed for so many years.

  In Tokyo I delivered a speech that made headlines around the world and stirred up a mild controversy at home. Before I left Washington, Foster Dulles and I had discussed what I should say about the touchy question of Japanese rearmament. Japanese disarmament had begun in 1946 and was formalized, at American insistence, by the Japanese Constitution in 1947. Privately we felt that some kind of Japanese armed defense force would soon be necessary to resist Communist domination of the Pacific. But in 1953 World War II was still a painfully recent memory, and we knew that the first mention of Japanese rearmament would raise storms of protest. Dulles thought that raising the subject first in Japan itself might help blunt the political impact in America, and I decided that an invitation to address a luncheon sponsored by the America-Japan Society and several other groups would provide the ideal forum. I said:

  Now if disarmament was right in 1946, why is it wrong in 1953? And if it was right in 1946 and wrong in 1953, why doesn’t the Un
ited States admit for once that it made a mistake? And I’m going to do something that I think perhaps ought to be done more by people in public life. I’m going to admit right here that the United States did make a mistake in 1946.

  We made a mistake because we misjudged the intentions of the Soviet leaders. . . . We recognize that disarmament under present world conditions by the free nations would inevitably lead to war and, therefore, it is because we want peace and we believe in peace that we ourselves have rearmed since 1946, and that we believe that Japan and other free nations must assume their share of the responsibility of rearming.

  The reaction in America to the speech was exactly what we had wanted: there was some speculation that I was launching a trial balloon, but many commentators simply assumed that I had gone too far on my own. Also as we had hoped, the speech had an enormously positive effect on the anticommunist leaders of Japan. What impressed all the Japanese, including the opposition parties, was that the United States admitted having made a mistake by imposing too harsh restrictions on their right to develop their ability to defend their country.

  The highlight of my visit to the Philippines was my meeting with the President-elect, Ramón Magsaysay. We hit it off extremely well, and Pat remarked afterward that she had never seen two men of different cultural backgrounds who seemed to have so much in common. Magsaysay was dedicated to giving the Filipino people the kind of honest and efficient government very few of their postwar leaders had provided. He had the enthusiastic support of the young people, and he was a magnetic orator. His death in an airplane accident in 1957 was a tragedy for the Philippines and for all of free Asia.

  The most exciting stop on the trip turned out to be Burma. This nation had recently received its independence from Britain, and its gentle, friendly people were having a difficult time combating persistent and skillful Communist infiltration.

  On Thanksgiving Day we drove fifty miles into the jungle outside Rangoon to see the famous reclining Buddha in the town of Pegu. A luncheon was held for us at the city hall, and in honor of our American holiday the Burmese had managed to find a turkey that they served as the main course. We were scheduled to walk to the shrine, but during dessert the local police captain told our Secret Service agent that a walk would not be safe because the Communists had organized a demonstration. They had distributed anti-American signs, and a sound truck was whipping up the crowd. The police feared an unpleasant incident with hecklers and scuffling. There was even a real possibility of violence.

  We had driven from Rangoon to Pegu with an armed escort because just a week earlier a guerrilla band had ambushed and killed some government officials traveling on the same road. Our Secret Service agent suggested that they bring our car around so that we could avoid the crowd by using the back door.

  I said I thought we should go ahead with the walk to the shrine exactly as arranged. No crowd of Communist demonstrators should be allowed to alter the itinerary of the Vice President of the United States. Our local hosts were not keen on the walk, however, so Pat and I started alone out the door of the city hall and toward the temple. The crowd filled the street. I ordered the Secret Service agents and the Burmese security officials not to go in front but to stay behind us and to show no weapons. As we walked into the crowd, it backed away.

  I went up to a man carrying a sign that said in English, “Go Back Warmonger.” I gave him a friendly smile. “I notice these cards are addressed to Mr. Nixon,” I said. “I am Nixon, and I am glad to know you. What’s your name?” The man backed away in shocked surprise as I extended my hand to him. I then zeroed in on the man who seemed to be the leader, and said to him, “Your signs here are wrong. America doesn’t want aggression. America wants peace. But what do you think about the countries who start aggressions, like the ones in Korea and Indochina?”

  He shrugged uncomfortably, and replied in English. “That is different,” he said.

  “How different?” I asked.

  “That is a struggle for national liberation,” he replied.

  I waited until I felt that the translation of this exchange had spread through the crowd and had a chance to sink in. Then I nodded my head as if he had explained everything perfectly. “Oh, I see, they are wars of national liberation,” I said. I paused, then smiled and said, “Well, at least tell me how many children you have.” Embarrassed, he began to sputter. The crowd laughed at his discomfiture, and one by one they put the signs down and began to move away. I was later told that by backing the leader down I had made him lose face with the people.

  This experience bolstered my instinctive belief that the only way to deal with Communists is to stand up to them. Otherwise, they will exploit your politeness as weakness. They will try to make you afraid and then take advantage of your fears. Fear is the primary weapon of Communists.

  The least friendly leader I met on this trip was Nehru. I had two private meetings with him in his office in New Delhi, one of them lasting for two hours. While I sat listening to Nehru’s softly modulated British English, a uniformed waiter served us tangerine juice and cashews. “We need a generation of peace in order to consolidate our independence,” he said. When I was President, I used his phrase “generation of peace” in many of my speeches as an expression of my own foreign policy goals.

  Nehru spoke obsessively and interminably about India’s relationship with Pakistan. He spent more time railing against India’s neighbor than discussing either U.S.–Indian relations or other Asian problems. He strongly opposed the controversial proposal of U.S. aid to Pakistan, and I was convinced that his objection owed much to his personal thirst for influence, if not control, over South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Nehru was a great leader who had pulled together a disparate collection of races, states, and religions in a way that no other Indian leader could have done. But having led his nation to independence against great odds, he then forced it into official neutrality and made himself a spokesman for nations that wanted to remain similarly uncommitted. Had he devoted as much of his ability to solving India’s internal economic and social ills as he did to playing his self-appointed role as spokesman for the underdeveloped nations of the Third World, Indian democracy might be more secure today.

  Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi, was his official hostess during our visit. She was intelligent, poised, and gracious, and I felt her deep inner strength and determination. Her father clearly adored her, and in every way she was her father’s daughter.

  I met scores of presidents and princes and prime ministers during this trip, but for me the most memorable meeting was with the leader of the province of Madras, Rajagopalachari, a wizened contemporary of Gandhi. The afternoon I spent with Rajaji, as he was known, had such a dramatic effect on me that I used many of his thoughts in my speeches over the next several years, and to this day I can see in my mind’s eye his small body, his large hawk nose, the fringe of wispy white hair around his ears, and his dark, piercing eyes as he sat on a straw mat, wearing just a dhoti and sandals.

  Paul Hoffman, who had supervised the Marshall Plan before becoming president of the Ford Foundation, had told me he was one of the world’s most gifted men. This was an understatement. After Rajaji’s name in the three pages of notes I made about our conversation I wrote: “Infinitely wise.”

  We talked about the nature and appeal of communism. “Communism will never succeed in the long run,” he said, “because it is based on a fundamental error. Self-interest is the motivating force for most human action. But by denying man the possibility of belief in God, the communists forfeit the possibility of any altruistic self-interest.”

  He was interested in learning what Eisenhower was like. “Is he religious?” he asked. “He is a very religious man,” I replied, “but not so much in outward form as in inner spirit.” Rajaji smiled. “That is typical of a military man,” he said. “It’s also typical for military men to be pacifists.”

  He spoke with great simplicity and emotion about the horror of the atomic bomb.
“It was wrong to discover it,” he said. “It was wrong to seek the secret of creation of matter. It isn’t needed for civilian purposes. It is an evil thing, and it will destroy those who discovered it.”

  We discussed predestination, and I suggested that perhaps he was meant to lead India and South Asia along the paths of his ideas. He smiled sadly and said, “Oh, no, I am happy here. The world is unhappy, so why should I leave? I am seventy-four years old. In India, that is very old. My body is tired. Perhaps my brain is not, but younger men must be found to conduct the fight. Younger men like you,” he said as he smiled again.

  In Pakistan I met Ayub Khan, who was then commander of Pakistan’s armed forces and had not yet assumed political power. I particularly enjoyed talking to him because, unlike most of his countrymen, he was not obsessed by the Pakistan–India problem. He did indicate his total contempt for the Hindus and his distrust of the Indians, but he was more anticommunist than anti-Indian. He was seriously concerned about the communist threat, both ideological and military, and about the danger that the Soviets would use India as a cat’s-paw for establishing a major presence in South Asia. At that period in his career he was strongly pro-American and believed that Pakistan and the United States should be allies and friends.

  Foster Dulles had not been able to visit Iran during his Middle East trip because of the unsettled conditions there at that time. A few months later a violent coup had taken place and the procommunist regime of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh was overthrown by the military. A government supporting the Shah, Mohammed Riza Pahlevi, was installed under Prime Minister Fazollah Zahedi. Zahedi, whose son later served as ambassador to the United States while I was President, was intelligent and wise, with enormous strength of character. Without his leadership I am convinced Iran would not be an independent nation today.