PPS files, lot 65 D 101, “China”
No. 431
Memorandum by Henry Owen of the Office of Intelligence
Research to the Director of the Policy Planning Staff (Bowie)1
Subject:
- The London Economist and the Offshore Islands (Mostly the Latter)
- 1.
-
Effect of Present Policy. The attached article from a recent London Economist2 succinctly describes the dangers inherent in our present policy toward the offshore islands. The only thing questionable seems to me its apparent conclusion that “restraint and wisdom” by US military personnel on the spot might avert these dangers. For as long as our policy remains to “keep the Communists guessing” as to what we would do in the event of an attack on the offshore islands, there must exist—to quote from NIE’s, which have repeatedly warned that this was the way in which war was most likely to come about—a risk that “general war might occur as the climax of a series of actions and counteractions which neither side originally intended to lead to general war”.
This risk arises, it seems to me, out of the fact that the Communists are unlikely to be deterred by our present policy from progressively [Page 997] expanding their pressure on the offshore islands. The IAC estimates, in fact, that they will not only continue probing operations but also eventually attempt to conquer the islands, one by one.
I do not know what the NSC has decided we should do in the event of an attack on the islands, but I am not sure that this decision would prove much more relevant to the course of events than the US decision concerning the defense of South Korea turned out to be after June 25, 1950.
Tolstoy once said that the only decisions which get carried out are those which correspond to what would have happened if they had not been made. This may be extreme, but we should not exaggerate the ability of the executive branch of the US Government to carry out its present intentions in regard to the offshore islands, whatever they may be, at a time when it would have to make decisions quickly, in great excitement and under extreme pressure, in confused communication with local commanders who had their own views and who had to act even more quickly, and in the face of an excited and divided domestic opinion (whose divisions would be reflected, to some extent, in the executive branch itself).
My own feeling is that no one of us knows what would happen if the Communists began to invade the offshore islands, while the National Government of China remained committed to their defense, and before the US Government had made clear its intentions with respect to that defense.
At least some US Congressional and press opinion, inflamed by the current Sino-American dispute over the trial of the eleven airmen, would probably call for vigorous action.
It is possible that the US Government would be influenced not only by that call but also by the way that many of its members (possibly including you and I) might feel if they read of 50,000 Nationalist soldiers on Quemoy fighting bravely but about to be swamped for lack of supplies and air support. When large headlines tell of considerable blood being spilled by friendly forces, a new atmosphere is apt to be created, in which decisions that were made in calmer times may seem of only academic relevance.
In such an atmosphere, it would be only too easy for a US Government that was not publicly committed to a different course to respond to external pressures and to its own mixed feelings by authorizing the local US commander to take certain half-way measures, e.g., to protect reinforcements to or withdrawals from the island under attack. Such measures could mean American losses, which might lead to US counteraction.
In any fighting which came about in this way, the US would, as the Economist implies, find itself completely isolated from its major [Page 998] allies. That isolation would certainly not discourage the Russians from affording Peiping maximum support.
Now suppose, on the other hand, that the US did nothing, in the event of an attack upon the offshore islands, except take the case to the UN, where it would probably meet with little favor. Would not the US loss of prestige be much greater than if US intentions had previously been made clear?
The Chinese Communists might be more apt than otherwise to conclude that there was a certain amount of bluff to US policy, and there might be greater doubts in such areas as Taiwan and Thailand as to US reliability. Part of the US Congress, press, and public might feel ashamed and embittered by our failure to defend a position which our deliberately mystifying policy had caused them to believe we might possibly seek to hold. The after-effects of this adverse domestic reaction could create an atmosphere within which it would be more difficult to maintain a moderate and predictable US policy in the Far East.
- 2.
- Possible Alternatives. These
possibilities raise a question as to whether it would not be
better to abandon our present “keep them guessing” policy and
make a clear-cut choice between:
- (a)
- telling the National Government of China that we would be unwilling to afford any material aid to troops on the off-shore islands after a given date, that we urge these troops’ withdrawal before that date, and that we would be willing to use the threat of force to deter any Communist attack upon them until that date;
- (b)
- advising the Chinese Communists that we would regard any attack upon the offshore islands as preliminary to an attack upon Taiwan, and would react accordingly.
- 3.
-
Evaluation. Obviously, each of these two courses of action has grave disadvantages.
The National Government of China would blame us bitterly, and probably publicly, for the withdrawal of its forces. If it refused to effect that withdrawal, we would have to make clear the policy which we were following, in order to avoid the disadvantages of our present course of action: this clarification would hasten (but probably only hasten) the inevitable Communist attack upon the islands.
If we took the offshore islands under our wing, we would have given a standing hostage to fortune—although one whom we might hope that only a Chinese Communist Government which was fully prepared for hostilities with us would be likely to execute.
The disadvantages of our present course appear even greater, however, than those suggested above. These disadvantages can perhaps best be illustrated by reference to history.
[Page 999]When Russia and Turkey were at war over the Holy Places in 1853, the British Government was divided in its purposes. Some of its members, like Palmerston, were looking for a pretext to retract overall Russian power; others, like the Prime Minister—who complained that Palmerston had “sketched out the plan for a thirty year’s war”—merely wanted to preserve Turkey’s integrity. This same division was reflected in the press and in public opinion.
Because it was unable to agree on the terms of any warning, the government never got around to telling the Russians how far they could—or could not—go in destroying Turkish power; it was equally too weak and divided to exercise any effective restraint on the Turks. When the latter sailed a fleet provocatively close to Russian ports in the Black Sea, the Russians, who had already managed to occupy Turkey’s Danubian Principalities without any trouble from the West, decided to have a shot at its destruction. The public outcry in England at the resultant “massacre” of a fleet only very vaguely under British protection forced a reluctant government to send into the Black Sea the British warships which had been cautiously held back at the Bosphorus. These ships’ rather strange orders to force the Russian fleet to return to its ports rendered war virtually unavoidable.
At the threshold of the next great European war, it was Russia which failed to form and make clear in advance its intentions—this time with respect to the defense of Serbia. Thus the Central Powers, which Russia had allowed to humiliate Serbia in 1908, initiated a war which they expected to be no more than a local aggression against that Balkan country in 1914.
When Germany saw that Russia meant to uphold Serbia, she tried to draw back, but Russian opinion had by then become aroused by the Austrian shelling of Belgrade, and the pacifically minded Tsar did not feel that he could delay counteraction (general mobilization) any longer. German war plans, in turn, were so drawn as to render it impossible for Germany to tolerate the completion of Russian general mobilization.
If history renders a somber verdict on attempts to keep great and hostile powers guessing, it also suggests that a policy of clarity and firmness is apt to be rewarded.
One example: in 1878, in a situation somewhat similar to that which preceded the Crimean war, the British Government made very clear to the Russians, to its own public (at the cost of considerable domestic criticism), and to the Turks how far it would and would not permit Russia to go in her war against Turkey. As a result, the Russians drew back at the gates of Constantinople, the British fire-eaters were restrained, and a face-saving procedure for surrendering most of Russia’s war gains was devised at the Congress [Page 1000] of Berlin. War between England and Russia was averted, and most of European Turkey was saved—at least for another fifty years.
- 4.
- Conclusion. I suspect that most of the points made in this memorandum are not new, and that the need for clarifying our present policy toward the offshore islands is recognized in the Department.
I wonder, however, if an attempt is being made to meet this need with the urgency that the present situation seems to require. The Department has generally been an even less expeditious instrument for changing than for making policy, except in those cases where the change was being sought consciously and continuously at the highest levels as a matter of the highest priority.
The need for speed is now the greater since the Sino-American dispute over the case of the eleven airmen would seem to increase the difficulties involved in any attempt by the US Government to remain passive in the face of a Communist attack on the offshore islands. Since this dispute would also render it difficult to execute alternative (a)—disengagement, the only feasible course for the present would seem to be alternative (b)—a warning to the Chinese Communists.
If such a warning were publicly conveyed, it would probably be considered provocative by the Communists, and it might be contra-productive in its effects. A private warning would have the further advantage of not affecting the posture of the US Government in the eyes of the US public, thus preserving for that government a freedom of action which would be greatly reduced by any public declaration.
A private warning might be conveyed effectively via the USSR, and this could probably be done in such a way as not to prevent eventual adoption of alternative (a), if this were desired. For example, our Ambassador to Moscow could state frankly to the Soviets that the US:
- (a)
- would be unable, for reasons of prestige, to accept the forcible conquest of Nationalist positions on any of the major offshore islands during the present heightened period of Sino-American tension;
- (b)
- attached, however, no value to the offshore islands per se, and might be able to take a very different view of their eventual disposition after a period in which the Chinese Communists had negotiated a satisfactory settlement of the case of the eleven airmen and had refrained from further provocative actions.
If Chinese Communist actions were such as to encourage us to proceed with disengagement, discussions could be initiated with the Chinese Nationalists before the period of explicit US protection [Page 1001] had expired, with a view to persuading them to use this period to withdraw from the offshore islands. As a reward, they might be offered increased US aid (which could be linked to the expansion of Nationalist forces on Taiwan resulting from the islands’ evacuation); the alternative, they might be told, would be the explicit withdrawal of US protection from the offshore islands and hence the consequent probable eventual loss not only of these islands but also of the sizeable well-trained forces now stationed thereon.
If, on the other hand, the Chinese Communist actions were not encouraging, we would continue to make clear to Peiping via the Soviets our unchanging position with respect to the protection of the offshore islands.
In either case, the danger of our involvement in fighting as a result of a Chinese Communist miscalculation would seem likely to be reduced.