Wednesday, September 27, 1967
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
5
Prof has Thailand theory
A KU geography professor believes preventing establishment of base areas for guerrilla operations may help keep Thailand from being the next Asian country to have a prolonged "war of liberation."
Robert W. McColl expressed this opinion in an article in the University of Michigan Journal of Conflict Resolution.
Base areas, stated McColl, represent a major operational aspect of directing and extending a guerrilla war, "the ultimate purpose of which is total national political control."
With appropriate information on local and national conditions, he said "it should be possible to predict at least the general areas where preemptive efforts at control and development should be concentrated. It is obviously better to prevent the development of any sizeable base area than to attempt its destruction once it is established and the local population is committed to its existence."
Both China and Vietnam have shown, he concluded, that once a base area becomes reality, it is not easily if ever rooted out. After studying development of guerrilla wars in those countries, McColl applied these conclusions to Thailand:
- "Revolutionary activity in traditional-transitional societies is not randomly distributed geographically."
- "Concentration of revolutionary activity occurs particularly in cities and city-regions that act as centers for new ideas, and along important transportation lines."
"Revolutionary base areas result from the loss of legitimate political expression and act as the major element in providing revolutionary continuity. They provide 'secure' areas for training, and directing active insurgency and military actions by moderately large unis."
- "Base area locations are determined primarily by political considerations, secondarily by long-term defensibility and terrain."
"The general location of base areas can be predicted. The scale and degree of accuracy depends upon knowledge of local conditions and areas of socio-political unrest."
In Northeast Thailand, according to McColl, one of the best locations for a base area would be the mountainous section where Loei, Phitsnulok, and Phetchabun provinces join.
While the Northeast is currently receiving primary attention from Thai and American officials, he continued, "the Southeast, particularly along the Cambodian border and in the Dang Raek and Cardamome mountains, is potentially as dangerous if not more so." Northern Thailand with its dense vegetation and parallel north-south trending mountains presents numerous possibilities for location of base areas. In the dense and mountainous area along the Thai-Malay border in the southern peninsula Communist base areas are known to exist.
The Communist model for the location and operation of politically oriented base areas was first worked out in China, Mc-
Coll explained. "The immediate cause was the loss of an urban base for political operations."
Mao Tse-tung was only one of several leaders to use such bases; however, "Mao and his military adviser gradually evolved a set of guiding principles for the effective location and application of guerrilla base operations."
Among those principles are that revolutionary activity should be concentrated in areas with previous such activity and that local and national political stability should be weak or lacking.
Further rules require that the location have access to major political targets and that zones of weak or confused political control provide ideal havens. "Such zones," said McColl, "are usually found at the confluences of several provincial or national boundaries. They are ideal because police and military units seldom penetrate the region, preferring to it The 'problem' fall into the 'other' provinces."
Mao's final three rules are that the terrain must be favorable for military operations, the area should be economically self-sufficient, and, once established, the base should not be abandoned except under the most critical circumstances.
"The most important locational factor in all these points," McColl concluded, "is that political objectives clearly override purely geographic advantages. It is more important to fight on an essentially defenseless plain to gain a political objective than to hide in the mountains for personal safety."
The Tassel Returns
KU law graduate teaches his trade
A third generation KU graduate, Martin B. Dickinson Jr., has returned to the campus to teach in the School of Law.
There was really no other profession for the honors student to choose. His mother, father, grandfather, and father-in-law all are Kansas law alumni.
His father, Martin B. Dickinson, was graduated from the KU Law School in 1928 and is practicing law in Kansas City, Mo. His mother, Ruth Van Riper Dickinson, was graduated in 1929, and practiced for one year. Her father, Carl Van Riper, was admitted to the Kansas Bar in 1905, and practiced in Dodge City.
He and Mrs. Dickinson have two children: Nancy, two years old, and James Martin, three months.
Martin's father-in-law, James P. Mize, was graduated from KU law school in 1935, and practices in Salina. And his grandfather, William B. Dickinson, was graduated from the law school in 1902 and practiced in Kansas City, Mo.
But more than strong family ties brought the young lawyer back to the University. "I was impressed with what Dean Logan and the law faculty are trying to do here," he states. "Their plans should assure the school's national reputation and greatly enhance its contribution to the state."
Dickinson practiced for three years with the firm of Holme, Roberts, and Owen in Denver. At KU he will teach primarily in the area of federal income taxes.
distinction" and with honors in political science in 1960. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, he received a Woodrow Wilson fellowship, and earned a master's degree in political science at Stanford University the following year. He then studied law at the University of Michigan, where he was graduated in 1964 with the Order of the Coif, and was editor-in-chief of the Michigan Law Review.
His wife, the former Mary Ann Mize, also was graduated from KU "with distinction" in 1960. She, too, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and to Mortar Board, senior women's honor society. She majored in chemistry and received a master's degree in chemistry from the University of Michigan in 1963.
Dickinson was graduated from the College of Liberal Arts "with
Man's oldest known habitation in the American Southeast is Russell Cave, 9,000-year-old home of Stone Age man in Alabama.