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"After the end of the second world war, the British view was grim. It was that the balance of power in the pacific had been totally shattered in favor of the Un
by arminiusreturns 6y ago
"After the end of the second world war, the British view was grim. It was that the balance of power in the pacific had been totally shattered in favor of the United States. One response by London, was to support Mao Tse-tung's communist insurrection, against the pro-American, Kuomintang government of generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in China. FDR's personal representative in China, general Patrick J. Hurley, saw as a post-war goal, a strong unified China under Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT. The British backed Mao, with the idea that the communists could become the warlords of Bejing and northern China, while the KMT might hang on in the south, below the Yangtze river. Stalin was going to be encouraged by the British to detach Manchuria, Mongolia, and Chinese Turkestan, sometimes known as Xinjiang. The British especially hated Chiang and the KMT, who were the heirs to Sun Yat-sen's opposition to colonialism, and his support for modern economic development. The British by themselves would not have been able to consolidate Mao's regime. They were aided by the pro-British Harriman faction in the United States, including Dean Acheson and general George C. Marshall, who effectively made president Harry Truman their puppet in foreign affairs. The turning point came in 1945 and 1946, when Marshall was sent on a mission to China, which resulted in a half-year cutoff of US military aid to Chiang Kai-shek at a critical turning point in the Chinese civil war. After that, Mao made the long march to sieze most of China by the end of 1949. The British were among the first to recognize Mao's government, and supply him was strategic goods through Hong-Kong. After Mao's victory, the British oligarchs were looking for wars to cut the US down to size in the far east, and restore the balance of power. The result was the Korean war. Korea had been divided north and south between the Soviets and the US, although by early 1950, both had gone home. Harriman's friend Acheson declared that the US had no interest in South Korea, then Kim Il-sung of North Korea attacked. Suddenly Harriman and Acheson discovered that the fate of the free world depended on Korea, and they convinced Truman to fight. Truman ordered MacArthur to do the impossible, to save Korea with inferior forces. MacArthur's defense of Pusan, and then the Inchon invasion defeated North Korea and stunned the British plotters. Their gambit had backfired, and US supremacy was greater than ever. So the British turned once again to their favorite device; treachery. There was in those years a stable of triple agents based in London, especially in the foreign office. These included Kim Philby, the first secretary of the British embassy in Washington. Then there was Guy Burgess, the second secretary at that same embassy. Donald Maclean was the head of the American desk in Whitehall. Other associates of this group included sir Anthony Blunt, of Buckingham Palace, and Lord Victor Rothschild, of British intelligence. There was also Lester B. Pearson, the Canadian foreign minister. These men were triples. On the surface they were British agents. Scratch deeper and they were working for the KGB, which had recruited them at Cambridge in the 1930's, but at the deepest level, they were loyal to the British monarchy. It was British policy to stab the US in the back, so as to restore the balance of power. Having some triple agents around meant that the British could do this and get away with it, with plausible deniability. If the spies should be blown, the British could claim that it had been the KGB all along. The Philby-Rothschild group of triple agents were decisive in the Korean war. Phibly and Maclean were able to send Moscow, Bejing and Pyongyang, all of MacArthurs orders from President Truman. These included restrictions against carrying the war to China, with bombing, blockade, or hard pursuit. When Mao was sure that MacArthur's hands would be tied, he commited massive Chinese forces to Korea in November of 1951. Philby and Maclean obligingly saw to it, that Mao got all of MacArthurs military dispatches. So the communists knew exactly where and when to strike."
- esja 6y agoWhere does this quote come from?
- arminiusreturns 6y agoA talk given by historian Webster Tarpley.