In this situation Ramón Magsaysay, as Secretary of Defense, developed some of the most provocative and audacious anti-guerrilla operations of the postwar period. To meet the Communist claim that the struggle was one of the landless against the rich, he offered all surrendered Huks resettlement in a new land project; he visited the project himself frequently enough to make sure it remained a valuable demonstration area. To allow the common people to help the Government, without their suffering from Communist reprisals against themselves or their families, he disseminated secret methods whereby the people could communicate with the Government forces. He established a psychological warfare office under Major José Crisol. This office was doing as good a job of tactical PsyWar with leaflets, mimeographs, loudspeakers, light planes, and other field and headquarters equipment as any army installation which the author has seen. Most of the doctrine and procedures for the operation of the office were American, but the content of the materials was Filipino. Catholicism, Filipino patriotism, Malayan nativism and peasant common sense were some of the factors used to underscore the Philippine Army's appeals. In the following three years the Huks shrank seriously although the danger could not be said to have been eliminated altogether.
=Indochina and Political Warfare.= With devotion, often with heroism, frequently with brilliance, the French military forces in Indochina fought a Communist-captured nationalist movement known as the Viet Minh; they fought despite the accompaniments of a wretched and vacillating home policy, incredibly poor psychological relationships with the native élite, and security situations which pass all American belief. (One Vietnamese recently told the author that the pro-Communist Viet Minh soldiers fought as long as they could against the French and then came back to French territory to eat good food, visit their families, rest and relax before returning to the field to murder more French sentries, blow up more French patrols, or attack more French outposts.)
It ill becomes an American to criticize the French for their policy in Indochina since it was by virtue of a U.S. strategic decision and a U.S. logistical action that Indochina was turned first from Japanese hands into the hands of the British in the south and the Chinese Nationalists in the north. The British did not care much about the local situation. The particular Chinese Nationalists in northern Indochina were mildly sympathetic with local nationalism, but chiefly preoccupied with stealing everything that could be put on a truck. After this ill-fated liberation the Americans then assisted the French in transporting forces back to Indochina. This was after much of the U.S. press and many U.S. leaders had indicated their disapproval of French colonialism and had given indirect but powerful encouragement to Viet Minh's rebellion against the French. Having helped foul up the situation for the French hopelessly, the United States then observed their return (a return which was definitely, though indirectly, made possible only by U.S. aid to France) with uncertainty and disquiet. It took the Americans four years to decide that they were on the French side and even then they were not very much on the French side.