THE TONKIN GULF: CARTE BLANCHE
In August 1964 the fog of war proved convenient. On the 2nd, the US destroyer Maddoxn patrolling in the Tonkin Gulf, was fired upon by North Vietnamese patrol boats. Two days later, another destroyer, the Turner Joyn spotted torpedoes approaching, though they might have been dolphins. What seemed murky in the Tonkin Gulf was perfectly clear in Washington: US naval forces had been attacked without provocation.
The war had not been going well. The South Vietnamese government lurched from crisis to crisis, political deterioration exacerbated by military defeat. By early summer 1964, American analysts were predicting that the Saigon regime would not survive to the end of the year. The People’s Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF, or Viet Cong) were meanwhile harassing American advisers, hoping to drive them out of the country. President Johnson felt powerless, especially since, with an election in November, he was reluctant to deploy combat troops. His campaign mantra went: “We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.”1
A master manipulator, Johnson realized that, in the event that he needed to go to war, he would need something dramatic to fire the wrath of the American people. This was conveniently provided in the Tonkin Gulf. The fact that the incidents occurred offshore, far from prying reporters, allowed Johnson to manufacture precisely the scenario he required. Though the Maddox had indeed been attacked, the second raid was at best an innocent misassumption, at worst an outright fabrication. Johnson privately surmised that “those dumb, stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish.”2
Still insisting that “we . . . seek no wider war,” Johnson asked Congress on August 4, for the authority “to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.” The subsequent Tonkin Gulf Resolution would remain in force until “the president shall determine that the peace and security of the area is reasonably assured.”3
The House of Representatives unanimously approved the resolution after a forty-minute debate. In the Senate, only Ernest Gruening of Alaska and Wayne Morse of Oregon disapproved. Gruening was “opposed to sacrificing a single American boy” in “a war in which we have no business.” Morse complained that a fundamental check upon presidential power had been squandered. “Within the next century, future generations will look with dismay and great disappointment upon a Congress which . . . [made] such a historic mistake.” Most Americans, however, thought that Morse and Gruening were simply whiners. The public, offered a righteous war, bought it enthusiastically. A Harris poll found that 85 percent of respondents supported Johnson’s policy.4
On August 5, American bombers pounded the port of Vinh, just over the border in North Vietnam. The aim was to punish the North for PLAF sins in the South. Privately, Johnson boasted: “I didn’t just screw Ho Chi Minh—I cut his pecker off.” The raid and the resolution convinced Hanoi that Johnson was on the verge of deploying combat troops. Firebrands at the Politburo pushed for a general offensive, in order to destroy the RVN before the Americans could mobilize. Driving the strategy was General Nguyen Chi Thanh, recently promoted to senior general, a snub to the more cautious Vo Nguyen Giap. Meanwhile, terror strikes were unleashed upon American targets, including a bombing of the Caravelle Hotel in Saigon—a raid that destroyed the city’s illusion of impregnability. On November 1 the American airbase at Bien Hoa was hit, and three servicemen were killed. Johnson, however, refused to be provoked just yet. With an election looming, he did not want Americans worrying about their sons in Vietnam.5
By early 1965, Hanoi stood on the verge of victory. A majority of the South was under National Liberation Front (NLF) control, the Saigon regime was steadily weakening, and the ARVN (the South Vietnamese army) was virtually moribund. Johnson, having won in a landslide by promising no wider war, was now free to act as he pleased. His instincts told him to mobilize, but his emotions pulled him back. Johnson’s equivocation convinced the North Vietnamese Politburo that the United States would not be able to save the ARVN from complete destruction. Thanh boasted that “the work of twenty years might be achieved in a day.”6
On February 7, PLAF guerrillas attacked the American camp at Pleiku, killing nine. Johnson, his patience nearly exhausted, moaned: “We have kept our gun over the mantel and our shells in the cupboard for a long time now . . . . And what was the result? They are killing our boys while they sleep in the night.” He approved Operation Flaming Dart, a bombing offensive against the North. National security adviser McGeorge Bundy wanted to “ma[k]e clear to our own people” that “at its very best the struggle in Vietnam will be long.” Johnson rejected that idea outright. Again came the assurance, “We seek no wider war.”7
Three days later, an attack at Qhi Nhon that killed twenty-three Americans pushed Johnson over the edge. He approved Operation Rolling Thunder, a program of “measured and limited air action . . . against selected targets” in the North. Instead of tit-for-tat reprisals, the United States would conduct a sustained bombing campaign on the assumption that Hanoi’s breaking point would eventually be reached.8
Contrary to American assumptions, bombing the North had no effect upon PLAF behavior in the South. Johnson was like King Canute, fighting to hold back a Red tide. He responded as presidents often respond: by sending in the Marines. On March 8, the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade hit the beaches northwest of Da Nang, the first combat troops to be deployed. The Marines were sent in to protect the Da Nang airbase from terrorist strikes and thus free ARVN troops for operations against the PLAF. Orders specifically stated: “The US Marine force will not, repeat will not, engage in day-to-day actions against the Viet Cong.” Johnson still hoped that bombing alone would do the trick. In other words, the deployment was not supposed to be a change of policy, but this is precisely what it became. Hanoi responded by sending additional PAVN units. An inexorable escalation had begun.9
Johnson’s political apprenticeship in the 1930s made him a firm believer in the power of government to relieve social hardship. His Great Society was an extension of the New Deal. The Thirties also provided another important lesson—namely, that totalitarian dictators could not be appeased. “The appetite of the aggressor is never satisfied,” he declared on April 7, 1965. In the context of the 1960s, those two lessons proved contradictory:
I knew from the start . . . that I was bound to be crucified either way I moved. If I left the woman I really loved—the Great Society—in order to get involved with that bitch of a war on the other side of the world, then I would lose everything at home. All my programs. All my hopes to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless. All my dreams to provide education and medical care to the browns and the blacks and the lame and the poor. But if I left that war and let the Communists take over South Vietnam, then I would be seen as a coward and my nation would be seen as an appeaser, and we would both find it impossible to accomplish anything for anybody anywhere on the entire globe.
Histrionics aside, that was a fair appraisal. Warnings about the dangers of appeasement were not mere talk, designed for a naïve public. In April 1965, McNamara remarked that failure in Vietnam would result in “a complete shift of world power. Asia goes Red, our prestige and integrity damaged, allies everywhere shaken.” Defeat, secretary of state Dean Rusk warned, would cause “the communist world . . . [to] draw conclusions that would lead . . . almost certainly to a catastrophic war.”10
At a conference in Honolulu in late April 1965, the Joint Chiefs pushed for further escalation. General Maxwell Taylor, who had opposed the deployment of Marines, warned of “ever-increasing commitments until, like the French, we would be occupying an essentially hostile country.” His doubts were, however, swamped by a tide of military optimism. The conference recommended increasing troop strength to 82,000 men. The additional troops, when combined with relentless bombing, would “break the will of the DRV/VC.” Back in Washington, Johnson, not without qualms, approved the recommendations.11
Three months later, the DRV was far from broken. McNamara, after a visit to Vietnam in early July, returned with a sense of foreboding. Now, however, no alternatives remained: having committed to a ground war, the United States could only escalate. On July 21, McNamara backed Pentagon requests for an extra 200,000 troops. George Ball, the loyal pessimist, warned of the “perilous voyage” that lay ahead. “I have great and grave apprehensions. We cannot win, Mr. President. The war will be long and protracted. The best we can hope for is a messy conclusion.”12
“The tide almost certainly cannot begin to turn in less than a few months,” a somewhat chastened McNamara advised, “and may not for a year or more; the war is one of attrition and will be a long one.” McNamara’s pessimism seems, in retrospect, optimistic. Ball, in contrast, was not sure “that we can beat the Viet Cong or even force them to the conference table on our terms, no matter how many white, foreign (US) troops we deploy. No one has demonstrated that a white ground force of whatever size can win a guerrilla war . . . in the midst of a population that refuses cooperation.” Failure, he warned, would be catastrophic: “The worst blow would be that the mightiest power on earth is unable to defeat a handful of guerrillas.”13
Johnson sided with McNamara’s view that victory in Vietnam was necessary—but he did so out of fear more than conviction. “This is what I could foresee,” he explained in 1971. “From all the evidence available to me it seemed likely that all of Southeast Asia would pass under Communist control, slowly or quickly, but inevitably, at least down to Singapore but almost certainly to Djakarta.” He worried about domestic political consequences—specifically, a “mean and destructive debate” over who was responsible for “losing” Vietnam. It would “shatter my presidency.” Truman’s difficulties after the “loss of China . . . were chickenshit compared to what might happen if we lost Vietnam.” Allies around the world “would conclude that our word was worth little or nothing.” He feared that “if I don’t go in now and they show later I should have gone, then they’ll be all over me in Congress. They won’t be talking about my civil rights bill, or education, or beautification. No sir, they’ll push Vietnam up my ass every time. Vietnam. Vietnam. Vietnam. Right up my ass.”14
Johnson therefore reluctantly decided that “we should do what was necessary to resist aggression but we should not be provoked into a major war.” He would send 50,000 troops immediately, holding an additional 50,000 at the ready. This half-hearted response could not disguise the painful logic of escalation. Sending troops would become an addiction, with ever-larger “fixes” needed to produce the same hopelessly transient high. Johnson escalated sufficiently to suit his political objectives, but not sufficiently to win in Vietnam. He nevertheless hoped it would be enough. “I’m going up her leg an inch at a time,” he told Senator George McGovern. “I’ll get to the snatch before they know what’s happening.”15
America went to war while pretending otherwise. No declaration of war was issued, no special budget passed, no attempt made to mobilize the American spirit. Johnson feared that war fever would shift attention from his domestic goals, rendering them moot. When he asked McNamara in July 1965 how much war would cost, the latter replied “twelve billion dollars in 1966.” In other words, it “would not require wage and price controls.” Americans would get guns and butter: a war and the Great Society. “We are a nation with the highest GNP, the highest wages, and the most people at work. We can do both. As long as I am president we will do both.”16
For the moment, the trick worked. Johnson remained popular and, aside from some rumbling on college campuses, Americans supported this strange war. But the demon that Johnson failed to slay in the summer of 1965 grew into a monster within six months. By clinging to the Great Society, he made the war unwinnable. By going to war, he made the Great Society unaffordable. Johnson was a clever politician, but the situation required a statesman. By avoiding difficulty, he sowed disaster.
SINAI: THE SIX-DAY WAR
Wars are started to correct the intolerable. The act of fighting, however, often renders the intolerable a good deal worse, encouraging nostalgia for the status quo ante bellum. Witness what happened in the Middle East in 1967. All of the belligerents—Israel, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan—had logical reason for war. Each sought a more advantageous distribution of land and power. But six days of war turned frying pan into fire. The predicament of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan worsened because they lost. Israel’s travails increased because she won.
In February 1966, a moderate regime in Syria was overthrown by radical Baathists. While it was customary for Syrians to despise Israelis, the new government was even more hostile than the old, more inclined to act upon hatred. Bellicosity rendered the Syrians more dependent upon Nasser’s Egypt, even though they found his regime distasteful. The Egyptians, in turn, sensed a need to support Syria in order to preserve their status as leaders of the Arab world. A formal defense pact, signed in November 1966, turned inclination into inevitability. Nasser found himself in the worst of all possible worlds: he was committed to defending Syria, but could do nothing to control its belligerence.
Syria, eager to punish Israel, encouraged militant Palestinians to strike against Israeli targets. This inevitably pulled Jordan into the conflagration. King Hussein had assiduously tried to prevent Palestinian fedayeen from using Jordan as a base, but Israel was disinclined to recognize his efforts. When, in November 1966, three Israeli soldiers were killed by a Palestinian mine near the Jordanian border, Israel retaliated by pummeling the West Bank, even though Syria would have been a more appropriate target. Angry West Bank residents turned on Hussein for failing to protect them, a reaction encouraged by Nasser, who had whipped himself into a frenzy.
Nasser had made his reputation through aggression, casting himself as the champion of small states unable to stand up to imperialist bullies. The Congo, Cuba, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Dominican Republic were interpreted by him as proof of how far the United States would go to extend its power. “The battle we are fighting,” he proclaimed, “is not an easy one . . . . We are fighting America, the greatest power in the world.” In the Middle East, he concluded, Israel was simply the agent of the Americans. “Israel today is the United States. We challenge you, Israel. No, in fact, we do not address the challenge to you, Israel, because you are unworthy of our challenge. But we challenge you, America.”17
Nasser sensed a perfect opportunity for a challenge. He presumed that the United States, stuck in the Vietnam quagmire, could not afford another conflict. For that same reason, the Soviet Union encouraged Egypt to foment trouble. A Soviet official confessed: “The USSR wanted to create another trouble spot for the United States, in addition to that already existing in Vietnam. The Soviet aim was to create a situation in which the United States would become seriously involved economically, politically, and possibly even militarily, and would suffer serious political reverses as a result of siding against the Arabs.” Soviet advice, however, was dangerously inconsistent. On one occasion, Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin told Egyptian defense minister Shams Badran: “It is better to sit at a negotiating table than to wage a battle by the sword.” To confuse matters further, defense minister Andrei Grechko promised that “if America enters the war, we will enter it on your side . . . . If something happens and you need us, just send us a signal. We will come to your aid immediately.”18
The Egyptians felt certain they could defeat Israel, as long as the United States stood aside. They also presumed that the Israelis, fearful of Egypt’s power, would do anything to avoid war. “We were confident that our army was ready and that Israel would not attack because . . . we were superior in armored weapons, artillery, and air power,” Badran recalled. “It was calculated that Israel would not walk into an open grave.”19
In fact, Israel welcomed war. Her embattled image was a carefully constructed myth. Attacks by militant Arabs, which appeared unprovoked, were, according to Moshe Dayan, often the result of Israeli manipulation: “It used to go like this . . . . We would send a tractor to plow some place of no value in the Demilitarized Zone, knowing, in advance, that the Syrians would start shooting. If they refrained, we would instruct the tractor to keep advancing, until the Syrians lost their temper and started shooting. Then we would start firing artillery, and, later, also send our air force.” The Israelis wanted a showdown. They felt cheated that battles won in the Suez conflict of 1956 had not yielded appropriate reward—they had been forced to surrender territorial gains. The assertiveness of the Palestinians also frightened them. Israeli fears that their enemies wished to destroy the country were given sinister encouragement by Nasser. “The mere existence of Israel is an aggression,” he argued. Radio broadcasts on Saut al-Arab, Nasser’s propaganda megaphone, proclaimed: “We have nothing for Israel except war. Our aim is to destroy the myth which says Israel is here to stay . . . . Every one of the 100 million Arabs has been living for the past nineteen years on one hope—to live to die on the day Israel is liquidated.”20
These threats convinced Israel that a quick assertion of power was warranted. An unprovoked attack, however, ran the risk of alienating world (especially American) opinion. Thus, the Israelis could not appear to be aggressors. At the same time, they knew that success depended on speed-in particular, the quick destruction of the Egyptian air force. Israel’s dilemma lay in how to appear the victim but still control events.
Nasser solved that problem. He, too, felt a need to assert himself. Though the resolution of the Suez Crisis had been favorable to Egypt, diplomatic victory could not completely hide military humiliation. Egypt needed to demonstrate that it was a true friend of the Palestinians and, more important, needed to restore its authority among Arab nations, who found Israeli dominance intolerable. On May 19,1967, Amman Radio pointedly remarked: “Will Egypt restore its batteries and guns to close its territorial waters in the Tiran Strait to the enemy? Logic, wisdom, and nationalism make it incumbent on Egypt to do so.”21
Three days later, in response to this pressure, Nasser ordered UN troops to leave the Sinai and moved his forces into the area. He simultaneously announced that he would blockade the Straits of Tiran, thus cutting off Israel’s access to the Red Sea. The waterway, he proclaimed, belonged to Egypt. “Under no circumstances will we allow the Israeli flag to pass through the Gulf of Aqaba.” The threat had economic implications, but, more important, suggested to the rest of the world that the Egyptians, whenever they pleased, could strangle Israel.22
Nasser, apparently, did not want war. He assumed that the Israelis would not respond aggressively to his challenge, allowing him to derive maximum benefit from their humiliation. Events had, however, spiraled out of control. His army commander, Abd al-Hakim Amer, promised that a surprise attack against Israeli airfields would yield enormous benefit. Amer had personal reason for wanting to attack: a feckless performance in 1956 and, subsequently, during the Yemeni civil war rendered him in need of rehabilitation. Nasser, unwilling to defy Amer, reluctantly approved his plan. The Israelis got wind of it, however, and foreign minister Abba Eban, in Washington on May 26, alerted President Johnson. Johnson in turn warned Kosygin that, in order to avert a global crisis, he’d better restrain Nasser. Kosygin complied, with the result that Amer’s attack was canceled.
Nasser, having been warned that he could not expect Russian help if he attacked first, was obliged to wait for an Israeli assault. Despite this setback, he still thought his forces could hold their own at least until the United States and the USSR forced a settlement. Granted, the Soviets and Americans would not have tolerated a prolonged contest, but Nasser failed to appreciate the Israeli capacity to conduct a lightning war and his side’s woeful inability to prevent one. Nor did he understand that the United States would welcome an Israeli rout of Egypt. On June 1, Meir Amit, chief of Mossad (Israel’s intelligence agency), met with defense secretary Robert McNamara. “He asked me two questions,” Amit recalled. “He said, ‘How long will it take?’ And I said, ‘Seven days.’ . . . And then, ‘How many casualties?’ . . . I said less than in 1948, when we had 6,000.” Johnson, given similar advice by the CIA, felt confident that the war could go ahead. He told Amit: “Do what you have to. . . . We know that you can hit Nasser, but it all depends on how strong and fast your action will be. Strength, speed, and resolve [will] prevent the intervention of any party you—and we—don’t wish to be there.” At the same time, for purposes of pretense, he advised prime minister Levi Eshkol: “I must emphasize the necessity for Israel not to make itself responsible for the initiation of hostilities. Israel will not be alone unless it decides to go alone. We cannot imagine that it will make this decision.”23
Johnson still hoped that the United States, with help from the British, could pressure the Egyptians to reopen the Straits of Tiran. Eshkol was inclined to give the Americans the time they needed, but his generals, led by Ariel Sharon, wanted war. They argued that Eshkol’s reticence was humiliating Israel and jeopardizing the chances for a quick victory. “We need to take a deep breath,” Eshkol told them on May 28. “We need patience. I don’t accept that the fact that the Egyptian army is sitting in Sinai means that we have to go to war . . . . Will we live forever by the sword?” In an attempt to preserve peace, Eshkol sent Nasser secret messages urging calm. Ironically, these had the opposite effect. Nasser interpreted them as evidence of Israeli weakness—Eshkol, he assumed, was frightened of war.24
Israel had created a powerful military in order to defend the country’s existence in a hostile world. A strong military, however, meant strong generals who assumed the right to bend the government to their will. They had the power to force Eshkol’s ouster. The fact that they had that power meant they did not have to use it. In order to keep his generals at bay, Eshkol brought the hardliner Dayan into his cabinet as defense minister on June 1. That was essentially a surrender to those breathing fire. “It haunted him,” Miriam Eshkol said of her husband. “He didn’t want war. He didn’t like war. It was the last thing he wanted in his life.” Yet war is what he got. On June 4, he told his wife: “Tomorrow it will start. There will be widows, orphans, bereaved parents. And all this I will have to take on my conscience.”25
The next day, Brigadier General Mordechai Hod rallied his men: “Soldiers of the air force, the blustering and swashbuckling Egyptian army is moving against us to annihilate our people . . . . Fly on, attack the enemy, pursue him to ruination, draw his fangs, scatter him in the wilderness, so that the people of Israel may live in peace in our land.” Hod’s pilots then launched a devastating strike against all seventeen Egyptian military airfields. At 10:00 A.M. on that first day, General Ezer Weizman phoned his wife and announced “The war is won.” He was not exaggerating. By lunch-time, the Egyptian air force had ceased to exist.26
Lacking air cover, Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai were quickly routed. Perhaps 10,000 died acting out Nasser’s fantasies on the peninsula; they either fell to Israeli arms or succumbed to thirst in the desert. With Egypt essentially defeated, Israel turned on Jordan. By the end of the third day of war, the West Bank was occupied. Jordan wisely accepted a UN demand for a cease-fire. Next came Syria. On June 10, after Israeli troops had overrun the Golan Heights, Syria accepted a truce. The war was over.
A foreign military attaché asked Hod how his forces had managed such a lightning victory if the war was—as Israel claimed—unexpected. Surely such a well-coordinated assault should have taken at least six months to prepare? “You are right,” Hod admitted, “but not quite. We have been preparing for it for eighteen and a half years.” Menachem Begin, then minister without portfolio, later confirmed that the war was a calculated act: “We . . . had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack them.”27
The Israelis had prepared for war, but not for peace. Intoxicated by their success, they equated future security with sustained military advance. They pushed across the Sinai, on the assumption that if Israeli soldiers could dip their toes in the Suez Canal, Israel itself would be safer. On the West Bank, the quest for security was reinforced by a perception of historical destiny. Further north, the Israelis pushed through the Golan Heights and would have advanced on Damascus, had not the Soviets and Americans demanded a halt.
The Americans got a glimpse of what could happen when Israel was given a free hand to reshape the Middle East. Though they wanted a withdrawal to the 4 June borders, they were not inclined to force the issue. The consequences were nevertheless clear to Rusk. On June 14, he warned a special committee of the National Security Council that if Israel insisted on holding the West Bank, “it would create a revanchism for the rest of the twentieth century.” That was an underestimate. More than forty years after the war, the Palestinian desire to recover lost land remains as fervent as ever.28
Territorial gains brought cruel inheritance. The war did not solve Israel’s problems; it multiplied them thousand-fold. David Ben-Gurion, first president of Israel and chief architect of its independence, argued immediately after the war that all the conquered lands except Jerusalem should be returned to the Arabs; otherwise, generations of Israelis would suffer terribly in defending them. But Israel had long since raced past Ben-Gurion’s good sense. In order to fight the war, ordinary Israelis had been encouraged to believe that they were underdogs. Unfortunately, the propaganda worked too well. Feelings of persecution encouraged a conclusion that territorial expansion was the best response to danger. The desire for well-being transformed Israel from oppressed to oppressor. David became Goliath. As one soldier remarked on his return from the war: “We’ve lost something terribly precious. We’ve lost our little country . . . . Our little country seems to get lost in this vast land.” Most of his countrymen, however, celebrated the victory, having convinced themselves that land was the same as security.29
BIAFRA: THE PROBLEM OF AFRICA
The map of Africa was drawn by imperialists. Borders were lines of convenience, demarcations of greed. Nowhere was this more evident than in Nigeria, which one colonial official called “the most artificial of the many administrative units created in the course of European occupation of Africa.” “Nigeria is not a nation,” Chief Obafemi Awolowo warned in 1947. “It is a mere geographical expression. There are no ‘Nigerians’ in the same sense as there are ‘English’ or ‘Welsh’ or ‘French.’ The word ‘Nigeria’ is merely a distinctive appellation to distinguish those who live within the boundaries of Nigeria from those who do not.”30
Awolowo’s warning was directed at those in the West who believed that African nations could be imagined into existence. Westerners carelessly labeled competing ethnic groups “tribes,” a word in harmony with the presumed savagery of Africa. “It is a mistake to designate them ‘tribes,’” complained Awolowo. “Each of them is a nation by itself . . . . There is as much difference between them as there is between Germans, English, Russians, and Turks.” Many Westerners would eventually grow disenchanted with decolonization because indigenous people stubbornly refused to respect their assigned nationality. To them, scenes of “Nigerians” attacking each other was proof of African savagery.31
When Nigeria was still a colony, ethnic divisions were muted by the overarching desire for independence on the part of otherwise contentious groups. Yet once that goal was achieved, in i960, ethnicity became paramount. Postcolonial Nigeria assumed a dangerously loose federal structure consisting of three regions defined by the principal ethnic groups. In the north, the Muslim Hausa and Fulani held sway. Since that area had been relatively neglected by the British, the people were generally unskilled and often illiterate. In contrast, the southwestern region, dominated by the Yoruba, and the southeastern areas, where the Igbo resided, had been more actively developed, leading to the emergence of a powerful middle class.
The well-educated Igbo had migrated into other areas as merchants, soldiers, and teachers, taking with them their version of modernity. In the context of 1960s Nigeria, education carried dangers. Because the Igbo were quite cosmopolitan, they were the most enthusiastic proponents of Nigerian nationhood. They came to be seen as missionaries for the new Nigeria, an image reinforced by the fact that they secured a disproportionate share of posts in the new government. Rival ethnic groups consequently interpreted the idea of Nigeria as an Igbo plot. Religious, ethnic, and political differences were exacerbated by economic disparities. To make matters worse, the Igbo sector was where Nigeria’s rich oilfields were concentrated.
The weak federal structure of the Nigerian government rendered the country prey to corrupt demagogues. Crisis became status quo. Disgusted with perpetual instability, five army majors, led by Chukwuma Nzeogwu, launched a coup in January 1966, ending Nigeria’s ill-fated experiment with democracy. “Our enemies are the political profiteers,” Nzeogwu proclaimed, “the swindlers, . . . those that seek to keep the country divided permanently so that they can remain in office as ministers and VIPs of waste; the tribalists; the nepotists.” Two days later, the five majors were victims of a countercoup, led by Major General John Aguiye-Ironsi. To those suspicious of conspiracy, the only thing that mattered was that four of the five majors were Igbo, as was Aguiye-Ironsi. Rumors spread of an Igbo plot to take over Nigeria and turn other ethnic groups into vassals of the new regime. Responding to the flood of anti-Igbo feeling, Major General Yakubu Gawon toppled Aguiye-Ironsi in July.32
The July coup was the opening shot in a nationwide campaign of vengeance. In the north, the discontented Hausa turned on the more prosperous Igbo living in their area, killing some 40,000 and forcing another million to flee to safety. Olu Oguibe watched “whole families set ablaze by their neighbours in the middle of the night, children hacked to death in their sleep, women violated by men who only the previous day would have doffed their hats to them, . . . some men burnt at the stake, some decapitated, others hounded through the streets and stoned, while their adversaries gambled for their clothes.” Eventually, perhaps two million Igbo living throughout Nigeria flooded back to their native territory, a region ill-equipped to accommodate the sudden influx. For Western journalists, the massacre seemed proof of African savagery. “There are forces let loose in Africa that white men cannot understand,” wrote a smug Frederick Forsyth in the Sunday Times. “This is genocide.” The fact that the Igbo were well-educated and “civilized,” not to mention persecuted, made them a popular cause in the West. They became the “Jews of Africa,” a metaphor all the more powerful given the concurrence of the Six-Day War.33
“Having been treated like people from another country, and nearly annihilated,” wrote Oguibe, “[the Igbo] became another country.” On May 30, 1967, Colonel Emeka Ojukwu, the leader of the eastern sector, unilaterally declared independence, setting up the Republic of Biafra. Gawon, unwilling to write off all that oil, immediately mobilized his army. Ojukwu, who quickly promoted himself to general, was not particularly interested in Igbo self-determination, but did fancy becoming an oil-rich African dictator. His status as an underdog made it easy for bleeding hearts to rally to his side. For a brief period in Britain, Biafra was a moral cause more agonizing than Vietnam. In 1969, John Lennon returned his MBE partly as a protest against the government’s betrayal of Biafra. Ojukwu kept British passions fired by hiring a very good London PR agency.34
The losers in this power struggle were the people of Biafra. They fought with all the fervor of an embattled ethnic minority defending its homeland. After six months of vicious fighting, they had won most of the battles but were nowhere near winning the war. Since fighting had occurred predominantly in Biafra, serious damage was done to a fragile agrarian system. Gawon’s troops had also seized the area around the Niger River delta, thus cutting off the major supply routes. He then simply waited for Biafra to starve. “Starvation is a legitimate weapon of war,” his finance minister declared, “and we have every intention to use it against the rebels.” Gawon, keen to teach the Igbo a lesson, ignored the atrocities of his army. Nor were his soldiers inclined to intervene when rival ethnic groups massacred the Igbo. In December 1968, the Red Cross reported that 14,000 Biafrans were dying every day. The fact that perhaps 80 percent of the casualties were women and children made this a thoroughly modern war. The term “ethnic cleansing” had not yet been invented, but should have been.35
Biafra defied solution: the starvation of millions was tragic and reprehensible, but so too was the breakup of Nigeria. If Africa was to modernize, that process implied large nations, not hundreds of competing ethnicities. Balkanization promised only chaos and conflict. “Self-determination pursued to its logical conclusion would not stop at a sovereign Biafra,” argued Adepitan Bamisaiye in 1974. “A sovereign Igbo or Yoruba state will most likely not be content until it has been subdivided into sovereign Nnewi and Onitsha Igbo states and sovereign Oyo, Egba, Ekiti, Ijebu states . . . . Self-determination thoroughly carried out in Africa would end in each household or clan having its own separate flag.” He concluded that, however regrettable the deaths, bloodletting was necessary in order to ensure the survival of Nigeria.36
Western nations seemed fully prepared to let Biafrans suffer, apparently concluding that it was the African nature to do so. “All I really ask is that the outside world look at us as human beings and not as Negroes bashing heads,” Ojukwu complained. “If three Russian writers are imprisoned the whole world is outraged, but when thousands of Negroes are massacred . . .” Had the Biafran problem been a simple case of starvation, the West might have been able to act, but the fact that the starvation was wrapped in politics made it messy. The United States, taking refuge in hypocrisy, explained that it was not inclined to intervene in civil wars. The British expressed regret at the enormous loss of life, but argued that they did not want to encourage tribal secession in Africa.37
Paper-thin principles camouflaged cynical power politics. The Americans maintained a studied detachment, letting the British carry the can. “We regard Nigeria as part of Britain’s sphere of influence,” Rusk claimed. The British, who got 10 percent of their oil from Nigeria, were keen to preserve the status quo. Alarmed by the initial success of the Biafrans, they generously supplied Gawon. UK arms exports to Nigeria increased from £70,000 in 1966 to more than £10 million in 1969. This, however, meant that the British found themselves in the embarrassing position of backing the same side as the Soviet Union, who sought a foothold in Africa. Backing the Biafrans were the French, though not for humanitarian reasons. The British argued, with justification, that the French objective “appears to be the breakup of Nigeria, which threatens, by its size and potential, to overshadow France’s client Francophone states in West Africa.”38
Gawon complained that French aid, by prolonging the war, worsened the suffering. That was probably true. Aid without a political solution merely extended the plight of Biafra, which never had a hope of winning. In January 1970, Biafran resistance finally collapsed. At least one million, and probably twice that number, had starved to death. “This war,” wrote Auberon Waugh, “will come to epitomize the inhumanity of our age. One day the world will look into the eyes of Biafra and recoil at the reflections of its own image.” While his sentiments were admirable, his prediction proved wrong. In retrospect Biafra seems nothing more than mere episode in the long-running tragedy of Africa.39
GUANGXI PROVINCE: CANNIBALS FOR MAO
In July 1968, trouble flared in Guangxi Province, in the People’s Republic of China, between forces loyal to the Communist party and a rebel faction calling itself the 411 Group. After five months of fierce fighting, the group was completely eradicated, with more than 200,000 rebels and sympathizers killed. “Sympathizer” was loosely defined. Anyone identified as a “class enemy” was liable to beatings, torture, and execution. That included ex-landlords, rich peasants, those deemed bourgeois, and anyone displaying “rightist” characteristics. Guilt could be inherited; those related by family, marriage, or friendship to class enemies were persecuted, including newborn babies. An efficient technique for executing babies evolved: the killer stepped on one of its legs, then pulled the other leg, tearing the baby in half.
In the worst instances of brutality, “class enemies” were viciously murdered, then eaten. Up to 3,000 instances of cannibalism in Guangxi have been documented by the dissident Zheng Yi. He has identified three evolutionary stages. The first was covert and random: an individual would ambush an enemy, cut him open, and crudely remove his heart and liver, which were then cooked and eaten in secret. The next stage was open, public, and highly ritualized, involving refined methods of dissection. The killer would flaunt his expertise before a crowd, after which the body parts were eaten communally. In the final stage, order disintegrated as mobs engaged in frenzied killing, hacking enemies to pieces and fighting over organs in a bacchanalian feast.
The Cultural Revolution was an orgy of violence lasting from 1966 until Mao’s death ten years later. In the beginning, it was rooted in coherent revolutionary theory, but the zeal it inspired quickly overwhelmed ideology, not to mention government control. For a decade, China was gripped by unrelenting carnage. Simply killing an enemy was not enough; in order to demonstrate loyalty to Mao, citizens competed with each other in imaginative acts of brutality. In places, this meant eating the enemy, which supposedly fortified revolutionary zeal. At the height of the violence, the cafeteria of the Wuxuan Revolutionary Committee had human flesh on the menu.40
The revolution started as an attempt by Mao to reassert authority over his party, and to purge “revisionist” thought. His reputation had been battered by the Great Leap Forward of the 1950s, a disastrous attempt at rapid industrialization. Since progress was measured almost exclusively by the production of steel, service to the party was judged by crude calculations of tonnage. Peasants were persuaded to switch from farming to steel, with primitive backyard smelters appearing everywhere. Production did increase, though the quality was often so poor that the steel had no use other than as propaganda. “Industrialization” came at the cost of a steep decline in agricultural production, partly because farm implements were melted down to meet steel quotas. By the end of the 1950s, the Chinese had plenty of steel, but little food. Probably 40 million died of starvation. “We believe in dialectics,” Mao remarked in reference to the famine, “so we can’t not be in favor of death.” He confessed that he was prepared to sacrifice 300 million people, or half the population, for the victory of the revolution.41
In the aftermath of the Great Leap, criticism of Mao reached a crescendo. Revisionists openly advocated more productive ways of managing the economy, at the cost of ideological purity. On December 10, 1958, Mao resigned as chairman of the People’s Republic, though he remained head of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The change was purportedly voluntary, but in truth he was forced from office, later confessing that he felt like “a dead man at his own funeral.” The day-to-day running of the country fell to the new CCP chairman, Liu Shaoqi; the premier, Zhou Enlai; and the general secretary, Deng Xiaoping.42
When the Central Committee met at Lushan in 1959, defense minister Peng Dehuai launched an unprecedented attack on Mao’s policies. “In the view of some comrades,” he argued, “putting politics in command could be a substitute for everything . . . . But putting politics in command is no substitute for economic principles.” Though the criticism was justified, Peng made the mistake of consulting Khrushchev beforehand, which automatically rendered him suspect. His outburst was nevertheless indicative of widespread disquiet, even if this was not openly voiced. Whisperers questioned whether Mao still possessed the mental acuity and physical stamina to lead the country. Mao responded by arguing that the Great Leap had been ideologically correct, if flawed in execution. Critics were dismissed as bourgeois revisionists, while Lushan was written off as a minor manifestation of class struggle—an example of “the continuation of the life-or-death struggle between the two great antagonists of the socialist revolution.” After Peng was banished for being a Soviet lackey, the new defense minister, Lin Biao, sensing an opportunity, assumed a strategic loyalty. “Chairman Mao is a genius,” he later proclaimed. “Every sentence of . . . [his] is a truth. One single sentence of his surpasses ten thousand of ours.”43
Mao had rid himself of Peng, but now faced an even greater threat from Liu. Backed by Deng, Liu advocated cancellation of the disastrous Great Leap policies and a retreat from collectivism. His sights focused on supreme power, Liu was trying to maneuver Mao into a position of purely symbolic authority. In response, Mao began a campaign to demonstrate his intellectual and physical vigor, which included a claim that he swam ten miles on the Yangtze in just one hour, an extraordinary achievement for a man of seventy-three suffering from Parkinson’s disease and apoplexy.
Mao was isolated within his own arrogance. The deep reverence bestowed upon him as a result of his success in the revolution had convinced him that he was indeed superhuman. One CCP official later remarked that Mao “became . . . the source of correct thought; he placed himself above the Central Committee of the Party; he no longer participated in collective political life, and harmed, or even sabotaged, the Party’s system of democratic centralism. As he himself said to [Edgar] Snow: ‘I am a monk with an umbrella—subject neither to Heaven nor to the Law.”’ What began as a struggle for power quickly evolved into a nationwide purification movement. The complaints of Peng, and the reformism of Liu and Deng, seemed to indicate that the country had lost its way. Mao’s remedy was continuous revolution. He feared that complacency would lead to the creeping capitalism identified with Khrushchev. In a new offensive, he argued that the original revolution had failed to eradicate the exploiting classes; therefore, a capitalist resurgence threatened. He advocated a new purification struggle—those unwilling to purge automatically identified themselves as worthy of purgation.44
The new program was outlined in the “Decision concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” (also known as the “Sixteen Points”), adopted on August 8, 1966, by the CCP Central Committee. “Although the bourgeoisie has been overthrown,” the document proclaimed, “it is still trying to use the old ideas, culture, customs, and habits of the exploiting classes to corrupt the masses, capture their minds, and endeavor to stage a comeback. The proletariat must do the exact opposite: it must meet head-on every challenge of the bourgeoisie . . . . Our objective is to struggle against and overthrow those persons in authority who are taking the capitalist road.” Party functionaries at all levels were urged to “put daring above everything else” and “boldly arouse the masses” in the great struggle. “Don’t be afraid of disturbances,” the people were advised. “Chairman Mao has often told us that revolution cannot be so very refined, so gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained, and magnanimous.” Around this time, Mao openly complained that “Peking is not chaotic enough . . . . Peking is too civilized.” When he met Song Binbin, daughter of the prominent Communist Song Renqiong, he criticized her name, which means “gentle and polite.” “We need more violence,” he told her. She promptly changed her name to Song Yaowu—meaning “want violence.”45
Mao had fired a starter’s pistol for a monstrous gang of fanatics eager to wreak havoc in the name of purification. The Red Guard was formed to provide shock troops for the Cultural Revolution. Guardists were drawn mainly from the student population, on the assumption that young people were more inclined to zealotry and that they needed to experience firsthand the transforming power of revolution. Students were also the one group free from party control—unlike workers, peasants, and soldiers. Thus, they were perfect for what became an attack upon the party itself. Students were encouraged to abandon their studies and to roam the nation searching out and crushing all manifestations of revisionism.
The students’ first target was, perhaps understandably, their teachers, who were easily labeled capitalist scum. Schoolroom animosities were effortlessly translated into ideological conflicts, thanks to the validation provided by Mao. Esoteric knowledge was automatically equated with middle-class revisionism. The “Sixteen Points” advised students that “the phenomenon of our schools’ being dominated by bourgeois intellectuals must be completely changed.” This meant, in practice: “The period of schooling should be shortened. Courses should be fewer and better. The teaching material should be thoroughly transformed, in some cases beginning with simplifying complicated material. While their main task is to study, students should also learn other things. That is to say, in addition to their studies they should also learn industrial work, farming, and military affairs, and take part in the struggles of the Cultural Revolution to criticize the bourgeoisie.” Instructions specifically stressed that “when there is a debate, it should be conducted by reasoning, not force.” In truth, however, that proviso was neither sincere nor realizable. Once students had been invited to join the crusade and had been fired to fever pitch, violence became inevitable.46
When Wang Youqin was thirteen, she watched in horror as her female classmates tortured five teachers, pouring boiling water over them, beating them with nail-spiked clubs and forcing them to eat dirt. The vice principal, a fifty-year-old woman, died after three hours of continuous torment. The incident had a profound effect upon Wang, who has since documented more than 700 specific killings of educators, a small fraction of the actual number. “Stalin had show trials,” she remarks. “Mao did not even bother with trials . . . . Many teachers and principals were beaten to death by their Red Guard students, in their own schools and without any verdict.” Those singled out usually underwent a humiliating and sadistic public persecution, being forced to stand for hours in the “jet liner position” (bent forward at waist, arms outstretched) while reciting the “Ox-ghosts and Snake-demons” song over and over:
I am an ox-ghost and a snake-demon.
I am an ox-ghost and a snake-demon.
I am guilty. I am guilty.
I committed crimes against the people,
So the people take me as the object of the dictatorship.
I have to lower my head and admit my guilt.
I must be obedient.
I am not allowed to speak or act incorrectly.
If I speak or act incorrectly,
May you beat me and smash me,
Beat me a nd smash me.
The attacks tore apart schools. If a particular tutor was singled out for condemnation, all students faced a terrible moral dilemma. Since supporting the victim invited similar persecution, many opted to denounce teachers they admired.47
The witch-hunt spilled out of the schoolyard, spreading across China. “Learning revolution by making revolution” meant that almost any terrorist act could be passed off as part of the revolutionary education. Attacking the past meant breaking into homes in search of artifacts that might serve as evidence of elitism, traditionalism, or Western sympathy. People wearing traditional clothing were stopped in the street, stripped naked, and forced to repent. Women with long hair were forcibly shorn and frequently raped as punishment. Like a great beast devouring the population, revolutionary mobs grew bolder with each act of brutality. In Daxing County, near Beijing, a group of Red Guards killed 325 people in less than a week. The oldest victim was eighty, the youngest a baby hardly a month old. An old woman was taken into the street and mercilessly beaten by thugs wielding chains and leather belts. When she finally collapsed, a single female Red Guard jumped on her chest and stomach until she died. Another old woman, supposedly a landlord’s wife, was killed when her neighbors poured boiling water over her. When a victim died, Red Guards would often write on the ground near the body: “Good riddance, traitor! Even death cannot pay for your sin!” The corpse would be left until it rotted away. Friends and family members were reluctant to claim bodies, or attend funerals, for fear of inheriting persecution.48
Those not immediately murdered were sent to detention camps for “reeducation,” where they encountered unremitting horror. Food was short and disease rife. Sadistic Red Guards felt that they could do anything they wished to the detainees, since their traitorous behavior rendered them beneath contempt. Many were tortured, starved to death, or buried alive. Young girls, whose only crime might be a tenuous connection to an alleged revisionist, were kept as sex toys for guards.
The Cultural Revolution was an officially sanctioned generational conflict in which children were encouraged to question the authority of their elders. Parents were automatically suspect because they had experience of the prerevolution period. The Confucian concept of filial piety was brutally overturned, as children were encouraged to believe that their only essential loyalty was to the revolution and Mao. Liang Heng was astonished at how quickly an orderly society descended into chaos: “Everything was backward, distorted, corrupt, insane. I didn’t know if I was dreaming or if my life at home was a dream . . . . I would never trust my perception of reality again.”49
The attack upon tradition extended to the willful destruction of anything associated with the past. Libraries were ransacked, with ancient texts ceremoniously burned. Artifacts and ancient buildings were destroyed because they encouraged a worship of the past. Much destruction was carried out in self-preservation, as frightened citizens rid themselves of family heirlooms in order to avoid the wrath of the Red Guard. People also changed their names out of fear of retribution; those with “Chiang” in their name were particularly suspect. In desperation, some took the names of Cultural Revolution heroes, only to find that the shifting political climate soon left them with the name of a counterrevolutionary “black dog.” Streets, parks, and buildings with names linked to the past were given more politically correct names. In some places, the fact that red meant “stop” on a traffic light was deemed an insult to the revolution. Overnight, green became “stop” and red “go.” The resulting chaos in traffic was a perfect metaphor.
Mao’s political rehabilitation was more successful than he could ever have hoped. The Cultural Revolution raised him to godlike status—his people trampled one another in their desperate desire to venerate him. Red Guards occasionally demonstrated their devotion by jumping off buildings. The “Sixteen Points” proclaimed: “It is imperative to hold aloft the great red banner of Mao Tse-tung’s thought and put proletarian politics in command. The movement for the creative study and application of Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s works should be carried forward among the masses of the workers, peasants and soldiers, the cadres and the intellectuals, and Mao Tse-tung’s thought should be taken as the guide to action in the Cultural Revolution.” Mao’s “Little Red Book” became holy scripture. Some people carried two or more copies, the better to demonstrate devotion. Doctors advised patients to chant quotations in order to calm nerves, relieve pain, or assuage political sins. Many gave thanks to Mao before each meal. Houses were filled with Maoist icons, while those who inadvertently posted a photo of the leader in a “disrespectful” place were viciously punished. The cult of Mao, and the simultaneous fall of Liu, posed a terrible dilemma to those who possessed photos containing both men. When one individual, fearful for his life, opted to cut Liu out of the frame, he was publicly beaten for defacing an image of Mao. Another man was brutally attacked for wrapping his wet galoshes in a newspaper that, unbeknownst to him, carried a photo of Mao. A science teacher who casually referred to a principle of electromagnetism as a “universal axiom” was severely beaten because, in China, there was only one universal truth—namely, the teachings of Mao. “We had been brainwashed and deceived,” Song Yongyi, an expert on the Cultural Revolution, has written. “We were contaminated beyond redemption.” Ba Jin agrees, but nevertheless believes that “They could not have done it, if we had not let ourselves be taken in.”50
The success of the Cultural Revolution in overturning the party apparatus meant that government nearly ceased to exist. Red Guards efficiently purged officials, but were less effective at finding replacements. The Guard quickly disintegrated into rival factions whose worst excesses were directed at one another. Meanwhile, personal rivalries within the Central Committee were tragically acted out on a national stage. For Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, and her confederates in the “Gang of Four” (Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen), the Red Guard became an instrument of personal ambition. In response to Guardist violence, Liu deployed local militia units to restore stability, but, in doing so, angered Mao. Liu was forced to undergo public self-criticism sessions and was then sent to a detention camp, where he died in 1969. In this period, Deng was repeatedly sent for reeducation and forced to work in a tractor plant. Drunk on power, Jiang openly encouraged Red Guard units to take on Lin Biao’s PLA (People’s Liberation Army). Open clashes occurred throughout the country. At the same time, armed bands loyal to Deng and Liu occasionally took on Red Guard units.
In December 1968, Mao tried desperately to rein in the monster he had created. Leaders of Red Guard units were summoned to Beijing and subjected to a torrent of criticism, being blamed for “ultra-leftism” and “mad fratricidal combats.” With tears in his eyes, Mao accused them of betrayal. “You have let me down,” he told one group of faction leaders. “And what is more, you have disappointed the workers, the peasants, and the soldiers of China.” Relying on his personal prestige, he launched the “Down to the Countryside” movement, which encouraged young people to share in the life of the peasantry. Urban intellectuals were forced to take up work on farms. While ostensibly designed to put intellectuals in touch with their proletarian masters, it was also an attempt to disperse the power of the Red Guard by scattering them in the hinterlands. Though figures vary greatly, it’s estimated that around four million young people were sent into the countryside.51
The PLA’s gradual reassertion of power contributed to some of the most violent phases of the Cultural Revolution. When stability was finally restored, Lin Biao was able to take credit for the fact that a semblance of government still existed. Of his main rivals, Liu was dead, Deng sidelined, and Zhou severely weakened. Still carefully asserting his loyalty to Mao, Lin became effectively second-in-command. That, however, was a poisoned chalice, since Mao automatically suspected anyone in the number-two spot of plotting a coup. As Lin’s ambitions grew, Mao began to undermine him. Frustrated and deeply frightened, Lin railed against his onetime idol: “Today he uses this force to attack that force; tomorrow he uses that force to attack this force. Today he uses sweet words and honeyed talk to those whom he entices, and tomorrow he puts them to death for some fabricated crimes . . . . Looking back at the history of the past few decades, [do you see] anyone he had supported initially who has not finally been handed a political death sentence? . . . He is a paranoid and a sadist.” Lin eventually concluded that his only hope was to challenge Mao, while his army remained loyal. His precise role in the abortive coups and assassination attempts of September 1971 is not entirely clear, but he could not convincingly deny involvement. When, having played his last card, he attempted to flee to the Soviet Union on September 13, 1971, his plane crashed over Mongolia, killing all passengers. The whiff of conspiracy still lingers.52
The Cultural Revolution is an interesting case study of what happens when a nation systematically suspends its education system for an entire decade. It was by definition anti-intellectual, since intelligence and culture were deemed bourgeois. The educated “played dumb” out of self-protection. Attacks upon teachers and the closing of schools devastated the educational system, making it impossible to control rebellious youths. Later, as a result of the “Down to the Countryside” movement, the cream of China’s young intellectuals were sent into the hinterlands. Many did not return to the cities until the late 1970s, becoming in essence a “lost generation,” inadequately educated and improperly utilized. The word “lost” connotes not just the fact that they missed a proper education, but also the sense of betrayal which came when they realized that they had sacrificed their youth for a fanatical and destructive cause. Zhai Zhenhua started out as a Red Guard who loyally terrorized her fellow citizens. A few years later she was sent to the countryside to work in the fields alongside peasants; the hard labor ruined her health. Looking back, she feels only betrayal. “No schooling, no university, no future. My hopes were shattered, my dreams perished. It felt like the end of the world.”53
Song Yongyi cites “secret documents” indicating that 2.8 million people “met with unnatural deaths” during the Cultural Revolution. Others place the death toll much higher. This monstrous brand of revolution was exported abroad, most notably to Cambodia. Khmer Rouge leaders Pol Pot and Khieu Samphan were both trained in China, had audiences with Mao, and were given instruction from Zhang Chunqiao. Similar, but less successful, efforts to export revolution were carried out in Malaysia, Burma, and Vietnam.54
At the time, the Cultural Revolution seemed vibrant, dynamic, and forward-looking to those desperate to see it that way. It appealed to Sixties radicals because revolutions always seem so exciting. This one had all the essential elements: great slogans, absolute truths, rousing songs, and righteous violence, not to mention that the shock troops were students. It also produced great posters. For the left, the Cultural Revolution restored a faith battered by Stalin’s excesses and Khrushchev’s hypocrisy. It seemed a genuine break with history. French Maoists in particular worshiped the idea of the “mass line”: in the Cultural Revolution, they assumed, the party was learning from the people, rather than the other way around. For radicals everywhere, Mao seemed to be living the dream of continuous revolution; he demonstrated that political purify was both logical and attainable. “The distinction between intellectual and manual labor is being dissolved,” wrote Michael Rossman, in New Age Blues. “An intensive anti-Confucianism campaign is in progress; people are motivated by serving the people rather than by private interest; even the schizophrenics in the mental institution . . . are getting well by reading Mao . . . . The Chinese are using dependence on Mao’s word to free themselves from dependence on role-defined authority.” As radicals saw it, the Communist millennium had been achieved: Mao had shown how class distinctions could be eradicated with one righteous blow. That, at least, was the view of common-room Communists in the West who read about Mao in the cozy warmth of a student flat.55
The real story is one of unspeakable cruelty, sadism, genocide, and the betrayal of an entire generation. Jaia Sun-Childers recalls a realization that only truly dawned after the death of Mao:
We were a haunted people, numb, trapped in lies, made cynical by hypocrisy masquerading as the sacred . . . . Our Great Helmsman incited us to betray and murder one another to prove our loyalty to him. Now he lay, an immortal corpse in a crystal coffin, posing for posterity while we waited in lines stretching across Tiananmen Square to kowtow like fools . . . . Thanks to you, Chairman Mao, to your three million Cultural Revolution deaths, your hundred million exonerated victims, and all the horrors of your decade-long geriatric madness. We close the book on your Little Red Book of fairy tales, where the sublime and the absurd join hands with a nightmare in a convulsive dance . . . . We drank your myth and went mad together, and tore our world apart for your Great Illusion . . . . We don’t want to hear one more story that ends singing your praises. And we don’t want to spend our future crouching in your shadow, swimming in your abyss, worshiping your sanitized myth.
“Mao’s death signifies my release from prison” wrote Pu Ning, “and for many, many more Chinese it meant a release from a long, insufferable period of pain and terror.” The condemnation heaped on the Gang of Four after 1976 has allowed Mao to escape blame for the monstrous crimes he inspired. Today, the official line holds that he was guilty of an “erroneous appraisal of the prevailing class relations.” That, apparently, is how the Chinese want it. Their determination to ignore their nightmare past is the only thing that has prevented Mao from taking his place among the truly vile dictators of the twentieth century. 56