Generals and Hunger
By DAVID THOMSON* NEVER have the Generals had it better than in the last six months. It began with - the revolt of the Generals and Colonels in Algeria, which led to the installation in power of General de Gaulle and his own special version of the Republic. Then it happened all over Asia and the Near East. In July Brigadier Abdul Karim el-Kassem in Iraq seized power and became Premier. In Pakistan General Ayub Khan re- placed President Iskander Mirza, in Thailand Marshal Sarit Thanarat took over the premier- ship, in Burma General Ne Win formed a new government, in the Lebanon General Chehab did the same, in the Sudan General Ibrahim Abboud carried out a military coup. Only itt. the United States did a General, the constitutionally elected President of the Republic, suffer a series of reverses.
Perhaps it is because of this last fact that the events attracted much more comment and specu- lation in the United States than in this country. Press commentators began to tot up the other, States in the non-Communist world where mili- tary rulers were already in power, and found another ten in all—Nationalist China, Spain, Portugal (where Rear-Admiral Rodrigues Thomas was elected President last June), Egypt and the half-dozen Latin-American States of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Paraguay and Venezuela. The rise to influence of Lieutenant-General Nasution in Indonesia was noted with growing alarm.
The State Department was reported to be greatly worried by this phenomenon, interpreted as a 'retreat from democracy,' and to be con- sidering feverishly what, if anything, the United States Government ought to do about it. The Director of Central Intelligence, Mr. Allen W. Dulles, discussed it in a speech before the Practising Law Institute in New York, and found • Master of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. comfort in quoting a letter from Macaulay to an American friend over a hundred years ago in which that inveterate Whig remarked that 'institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty, or civilisation, or both.' A leader-writer in the Washington Post reminded his readers that 'once in politics, armies often are like the camel's nose in the tent'; but drew more substantial comfort from the fact that in so, many other Asiatic countries civilian govern- ments survive and make progress—in India, Japan, Viet Nam, Malaya, Cambodia and the Philippines.
Among the common reasons for these military take-overs it was widely suggested that shallow- rooted and incoherent parliamentary regimes, corrupt and inexperienced parliamentarians and the need for strong-arm methods to resist Com- munist infiltration are probably the most im- portant. Poor and ill-educated electorates "cer- tainly do not make for smooth-working parliamentary systems. Neither do factious poli- tical parties. One especially discerning commen- tator noted that many of the military coups listed had been directed against parliamentary systems modelled on the British and French con- stitutional traditions, whereas American-type presidential systems were not only favoured in Gaullist France but survived better in South Viet Nam and South Korea. !One may expect in- creasing interest in Asia in democracy on this pattern.' Another commentator hazarded the view that former colonial peoples had been so systematically prevented from gaining experience in self-government that the present ready sur- render to authoritarian military governments was a natural result : a view more flattering to American anti-colonialist prejudices than it was in tune with the facts, since Iraq and Thailand have surrendered what so far India, Ceylon, Malaya and most African peoples have not.
There are two evident truths about this. One is that Americans have shown themselves more acutely aware of important trends in world affairs these last six months than most of their British counterparts. The other is that the real signifi- cance of these trends has been obscured for them by a host of presuppositions about the nature of democracy in Asia and the Near East, the relative strength of mass desires for individual freedom and for national independence in these areas and the basic Malthusian facts of life in Asia today.
Given the social structure, political habits and economic system of all the Asiatic countries con- cerned, it was surely always probable that as soon as they encountered a combination of inter- nal dissension with growing economic dissatis- faction, military elites would push to the front of politics. To inflate the picture by counting in such veteran military regimes as those of Chiang Kai-shek and General Franco—not to mention the half-dozen Latin-American States—is merely to make one's own flesh creep unnecessarily. At few moments in time has it been impossible to find an imposing array of military and authorip tarian regimes in the world as a whole. Any analysis with contemporary significance must be confined to those of very recent birth.
Even within the seven recent creations, there is something far-fetched about bracketing the roles of General de Gaulle in France and of General Ne Win in Burma : though admittedly both were protests against parliamentary coalition governments and against proposals to negotiate with rebels, and France's five and a half million Communist voters give her just a little in common with the threat of Thakin Than Tun in the Bur- mese jungles. Such oddities apart, what is the real common ground for the events in Iraq, the Lebanon, Pakistan, Burma, Thailand and Indonesia?
It is, surely, that these lands lie within the zone of a growth of population far in excess of the available resources of food and wealth. Four years ago the United Naions ran in Rome a con- ference on world population. Its summary report pointed out that 'a belt of countries from Morocco through the Near East to the Philippines will show accelerating growth : populations which numbered 1,300 millions in 1950 will reach 2,000 millions by 1980.' Our thinking about world affairs has not yet been fully penetrated by the overwhelming Malthusian fact, no less fateful for man's future than the existence of nuclear fission or fusion, that mankind now increases at the rate of more than one per second. It is a truth so incredible, indeed so unimaginable, that it gets left out of our analyses of day-to-day events.
Sir Charles Darwin urged recently that 'in planning for the future of our world the central thing to consider is this figure of 90,000 extra lives every day.' It is also the ineluctable truth behind the upheavals in Asia, the Near East and North Africa : that, and the sad addendum that more than half mankind is still undernourished. It explains the wisdom behind General de Gaulle's plan for Algeria—a plan of economic development based on the Sahara's oil. It offers a central clue to the trend of events in Indo- nesia, where the population has risen so abruptly from seventy-two to eighty-four millions within a single decade. When Generals (or Premiers) rise (or fall) throughout this hunger-stricken zone, the surge of popular needs and emotions that rocks them is a surge of hungry men. It is a chastening thought at this time of Christmas cheer and extravagance.
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