761.94/1181
Memorandum by Mr. George Atcheson, Jr., of the Division of Far Eastern Affairs
The considerations contra appear to outweigh those pro a fundamental rapprochement between the Soviet Union and Japan. The considerations pro, however, are sufficiently strong to place such rapprochement within the category of possible, if not probable, developments.
Against such rapprochement stand Japanese idealogical beliefs in which there are elements of religio-fanaticism and which are submerged in and are in part motivated by a religious conception of Japan’s imperial destiny in the Far East. The Japanese people have been conditioned to a distrust of and an aversion to Communism and that attitude has become a profound part of their political psychology as it is based, fundamentally, upon fear—the fear of an island people that their nearby mainland neighbors are by very reason of their size and proximity a potential menace to security, that in the case of Soviet Russia the menace is increased by Soviet political philosophy and policy, that in the case of China the potential menace might become immediate if China should grow strong and united, that also in the case of China the menace would become immediate if China should adopt Communism or be dominated by Soviet influence. There has hence arisen an inevitable and perhaps diplomatically insoluble conflict of interests between China and expansionist Japan and between expansionist Russia and expansionist Japan. Japan is now attempting [Page 77] both to expand in China and to liquidate the menace felt by the Japanese to have been implied in the growth prior to 1937 of Chinese national unity and the extension of authority of the Chinese National Government. Japan is not now attempting to expand in Russian Asia and is concerned chiefly, in regard to the Soviet Union, with the actual and potential military menace which is constituted by the Soviet Far Eastern forces. That this menace is far from imaginary is apparent, for example, from the fact that the submarine and air base of Vladivostok is situated almost in the geographic center of the actual Japanese Empire (the Japanese islands, “Manchukuo” and Korea).
There stands against a Soviet-Japanese rapprochement, therefore: (a) psychological obstacles of a nature which it is believed are far more difficult to surmount than those which appeared to stand in the way of a Soviet-German rapprochement; (b) a major and traditional conflict of interests; and (c) an actual military menace not only to Japan’s adventurings in China (Soviet submarines’ could presumably interfere to considerable extent with Japan’s lines of communications to China), but to the physical security of the Japanese islands themselves. Specific problems of importance which reflect the mutual distrust and conflict of interests between Japan and the Soviet Union include Mongolia–”Manehukuo”–Korea border disputes which have resulted in large-scale hostilities, Japanese oil concessions on Saghalin Island, and the fisheries question.
It would seem that only as a temporary expedient would a definitive rapprochement between or alignment of the Soviet Union and Japan be possible. That such rapprochement or alignment would not be beyond the range of possibility is due to the facts that the rulers of both countries are at present opportunistic and expansionist in their policies; that both countries have objectives which might be furthered by such rapprochement or alignment; and that both have, or believe that they have, a common enemy in Great Britain whose position in Europe and India the Soviet Union wishes to undermine and whose position in China Japan wishes to destroy. Assuming that both Governments should develop the will to a rapprochement, it is probable that a basis for a temporary arrangement in the form of a political as well as military truce or in the form of an affirmative alignment of interests for the time being might be effected through compromise on the concrete problems which in recent years have brought Soviet-Japanese relations almost to the breaking point. The Japanese desiderata for such an arrangement might be: (a) cessation of Soviet aid to the Chinese National Government, (b) material reduction of the submarine and air forces at Vladivostok and of military forces on the Mongolia–”Manchukuo”–Korean border, and (c) “sincere” adjustment [Page 78] of difficulties in connection with the Saghalin oil concessions. The principal Soviet desiderata might be: (a) withdrawal of Japanese-Manchurian forces from the Siberian-Mongolian border, (b) adjustment of the fisheries question on a basis which would eliminate Japanese-claimed treaty rights, and (c) arrangement for consultation to dispose of various problems, including territorial problems. (It would seem unlikely that a rapprochement could be effected on any basis of a dividing of China between the two nations or of a demarcation of the country into contiguous Japanese and Soviet spheres of influence.)
That such rapprochement seems possible, if not probable, is a matter for concern because the possibility may be increased by action of the United States vis-à-vis Japan tending to increase Japan’s international isolation.92
- Marginal notation by the Adviser on Political Relations (Hornbeck): “It takes both Japan and Russia to conclude a Jap[anes]e-Sov[ie]t Pact.”↩