Apply this concept to Communism. Communism loses strength every day that it exists: each day deprives it of novelty, each day makes it a littler more familiar, each day makes its leaders one day older. If Americans can learn how to be flexible and imaginative and to understand themselves as they really are, they might find that the real American appeal to the youth of the world would be much greater than the Communist appeal. It was unfortunately characteristic of the United States in the early 1950s of the Cold War that U.S. propaganda was based on ideals and standards older than the ideals and standards competitively presented by the Communists, and that therefore in many parts of the world the struggle between Americans and Communists appeared to be a struggle on our side of the old against the young. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The United States army in Korea in 1950-53 was one of the most revolutionary armies in history, an army dedicated to non-victory, pledging allegiance to a shadowy world government of the United Nations behind the practical reality of the government of the United States. Perhaps never before in many centuries have men fought so matter-of-factly, so calmly, so reasonably. They fought well and did not need to be jazzed up with the hashish of "making the world safe for Democracy" or "establishing the Four Freedoms."
The temper of the U.S. forces in Korea in 1951 was demonstrated by a Reserve sergeant who scarcely knew he was in the Reserves until he was on a boat bound for Pusan. He was a practical man, anxious to get home, but willing to do his share in this war as long as he had to. He was given the assignment of testing the voice plane of U.S. headquarters at Taegu. The loudspeaker was not working quite right, and he was instructed to test the plane at 500, 1,000 and 1,500 feet. The plane flew low over U.S. headquarters. The roar of the engines almost deafened everyone within the building, yet even above the roar of the engines there could be heard the bone-chilling hum of the silent loudspeaker—an immense magnification of the noise one hears from a radio set which is turned on without being tuned to a station. Everyone expected the sergeant to say, "This is the EUSAK voice plane testing; one-ah, two-ah, three-ah!" Instead the immense voice came through clearly, through brick, and plaster, and wood, through air and trees. It must have reached four miles. The gigantic voice of the sergeant seemed to roar over half of South Korea as he said, "Why—don't—you—imperialist—sons o' bitches—go—back—to—Wall-Street—where—you—belong?" It was said that fifty colonels grabbed for their phones simultaneously, but the purely American gimmick to the whole story lay in the fact that the sergeant was not punished. No damage was done. The Americans thought their enemies were funny or silly. We had shown that we were not afraid of Communist ideas. Several South Koreans told the author that they regarded the Americans as inscrutable people indeed.
The development of modern civilization is certain to have developments in war both as to the purpose of war and as to the modes of war. It seems likely that in the face of the supreme danger of atomic and thermonuclear weapons nations will resort more and more to small wars and semi-war operations which will offer the opportunity of strategic advantage without the cataclysmic danger of a world-wide showdown. In a very hush-hush way the U.S. Army is looking into the possibilities of small and irregular kinds of war; security regulations prohibit the author from discussing some of the interesting new developments in this field.
National Research and Development Programs.
Within the general research field, two basic approaches have been recognized by the U.S. Army as being distinct from one another: developmental research and operations research. Developmental research consists of that research which creates new weapons, new methods of war, new devices or procedures, doing so by digging through modern science, investigating its applicability to military problems, and then advancing the frontier of science, when necessary, in the military interest. The goals of operations research are more modest and, in some respect, more provocative. Operations research takes operations as they exist and reexamines them from beginning to end to discover how much of each operation is scientifically pertinent to its stated goal, what economies, modifications, or changes might be introduced, and how the operation might be improved.
Developmental Research in PsyWar.
Developmental research had a great deal to offer, but the gap between initial scientific advance and practical military application appeared to be too broad to warrant the assumption that the research had transformed the U.S. PsyWar program.
Operations Research in Korea.
Among other things, Army officers in the PsyWar field showed, early in the Korean war, that land forces possessed tactical opportunities which combat propaganda could exploit very effectually. Various experiments were tried, none of them so decisive as to affect the outcome of the war, but some of them of real tactical value and others of great importance in obtaining Chinese prisoners.