American Air Strategy in China, 1939-1941: The Origins of Clandestine Air Warfare

Abstract

political and military intervention is a response to the tensions of the Cold War. Both direct intervention and the proliferation of counter-insurgency programs are heralded as pragmatic tactics developed to combat communist subversion in the underdeveloped world. Logically, however, it may be more rewarding to search for the origins of this policy in the Second World War. That war, after all, spawned the Central Intelligence Agency's predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services, and initiated an organizational revolution in the civil and military bureaucracies. While the patterns of covert military interventions share many features, a virtually constant element has been Washington's frequent use of informal or semiofficial agents and agencies to spearhead such adventures. Functionally, this method has two great advantages. Not only does it camouflage clandestine activity-an obvious prerequisite for many operations-but it also insulates top officials and bypasses frequent opposition from the more traditional factions within the foreign-policy-making bureaucracy. Historians and politicians have long argued whether a political conspiracy or clandestine military provocation facilitated the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Generally, those on the Right accused President Franklin Roosevelt of provoking or at least concealing foreknowledge of the attack. These critics decried a needless war whose legacy was Soviet expansion.' Liberal internationalists in sympathy with the New Deal