◆ SpookStack

4 22 PEACE IN VIETNAM insurgency, however, involves a fatal contradiction. Transition to the stage of self-sustaining growth requires three elements: capital accumulation, technical innovation, and institutional change. The latter includes such matters as Jand reform, a switch from sub- sistence to commercial crops, the widespread establishment of credit, supply and marketing cooperatives, expanded educational opportunities, population control, and the introduction of modern accounting methods and fiscal responsibility in government. It also necessitates the curtailment of privileges, favoritism, and corrup- tion—hallmarks of traditional Asian political systems. Without this institutional change the pouring in of capital and technical assistance from outside can, at best, produce only a thin veneer of urban modernization superimposed on a backward, underdeveloped, and increasingly frustrated society. Indigenous capital accumulation remains extremely difficult, and increased production based on improvements in agriculture and in Jocal in- dustries fails to materialize. All of these changes have been goals of stated American policy, but the problem lies in gaining the cooperation of local ruling groups in overcoming vested interests and the inertia of the old society. In the past our chief hopes for bringing about change have rested with the newly emerging, modern-minded, Western-oriented middle class in these countries; wherever possible we have sup- vtad th: ‘ i ported this class and the middle-of-the-road governments led by it. Unfortunately this class is small in numbers and almost entirely confined to the major cities. It has practically no political strength at all in the vast countryside where most of the population live. All too frequently the real political power lies with a group made up of traditional land-based gentry, a closely associated military caste, and urban merchants who are tied to the traditional socioeconomic pattern and strongly opposed to any change in the status quo that affects their immediate interests. Also allied with this group are many vestigial colonial interests: plantation owners, mine operators, lumber and petroleum firms, and other foreign concerns that produce raw materials for world markets. The chief potential counter-force, aside from a small and highly volatile section of the urban student and working-class population, consists largely of the mass of frustrated peasantry and ethnic or