320/12–450: Telegram
The United States Representative at the United Nations (Austin), to the Secretary of State
priority
[Received December 4—9:28 p. m.]
Delga 372. For Hickerson from Gross—re Rau talks with Wu.
Following are incidental points relating to Rau talks with Wu (Delga 368 December 4) added as supplemental report for sake of completeness.
Rau considered Chiao to be “the important man in the delegation”, commenting that he usually took the lead in the discussion and that Wu made few if any replies to questions without first consulting aside with Chiao in Chinese.
Rau seemed to have been impressed by fact that Wu kept referring to China and Chinese interests without mentioning Soviet relationships. Rau’s inference (to which he is normally prone in any event) is that Peiping is not necessarily acting upon instructions from Moscow although when I pressed him, he confessed to his belief that Moscow and Peiping are closely coordinated. Rau had no information concerning relations between Peiping and the Soviet delegation here, but Jebb volunteered that his impression was that they were not as close as he had assumed they would be. Jebb appeared to have no basis for this reaction except “atmosphere”.
Prior to arrival of Jebb and Younger, I spent almost ten minutes with Rau alone. He started by asking “how did this happen?” He said it appeared to him that there had been complete failure of information concerning size and disposition of Chinese forces. I replied I was not personally familiar with the situation in that regard, but that it seemed clear to me that in addition to the availability of information there was always the essential problem of evaluation of intention. I was sure that few people would have been prepared to believe that any man or group of men would have been capable of taking a decision with such obviously disastrous potentialities as the Chinese Communists had done. Rau replied by reminding me that his government [Page 1380] had passed on to the US Government some time ago advice from Panikkar reporting that the Peiping Government had made the explicit threat to him that they would intervene in Korea if our forces crossed the 38th Parallel. I expressed the guess that this information had undoubtedly been included in the evaluation of intention but that it was obvious that the practice of making threats was a weapon frequently resorted to by totalitarian regimes. The fact that we did not always discount such threats, I thought, was demonstrated by fact that when Peiping regime openly proclaimed its threats to take Formosa by force and massed forces on the mainland opposite the island, we evaluated their intention in a manner which led to the conclusion that it was necessary to interpose the 7th Fleet in order to prevent the carrying out of the threat. The fact that the Chinese Communists had taken incalculably grave step of invading Korea to overwhelm UN forces tended to confirm the correctness of our evaluation of the threat to Formosa and justify the decision to prevent the spread of hostilities in that area. Rau agreed to logic of this but said that what we had done by putting 7th Fleet into the Formosa Straits was to give to Peiping Government an assurance of safety from that quarter, thus releasing forces for use in Korea. I replied that if this were the case, it would merely serve to indicate the fraudulent nature of the Chinese Communists’ assertions that we had aggressive designs against them. I pointed out that whatever the nature of their propaganda, both the Russian and the Chinese Communists seemed to take our assurances at face value in many specific situations and I had always doubted that their asserted fears of our intentions were anything but propaganda slogans or dogmatic rituals. As an example, I pointed to fact that both the Chinese Communists and the Soviet representatives had always attacked the reports of the UNCOK as emanating from a “creature of the Anglo-American imperialistic bloc”, even though they knew India was a member of the Commission and had signed the Commission’s reports.
Apropos of Rau’s reference to 38th Parallel, I said we had been struck by fact that in Wu’s two-hour opening speech in the SC, he had not once mentioned the 38th Parallel.
Rau’s tone throughout was depressed rather than critical. It was my impression that Nehru is using Rau as his principal agent for the discussions with the Chinese Communists. When Rau subsequently in the conversation (Delga 368) referred to the delay in communications as described to him by Wu, I could not help wondering why New Delhi, which had obviously been kept closely advised, did not seek to expedite receipt of Peiping’s views by requesting Panikkar to see Mao. Attitude of GOI toward Panikkar as reflected in Rau’s comments may have some relevance to this. (Re mytel 921 December 1.)
[Page 1381]One point which. I forgot to include in my hastily dictated telegram (Delga 368) was that Rau mentioned that Wu had during course of his conversation pointed to fact that our offensive in Korea coincided with arrival at Lake Success of Peiping delegation. Rau said Wu appeared to attach great importance to this point, mentioning it along with our attitude toward seating Peiping representatives in UN and our “occupation of Formosa” as evidence of our hostile attitude towards Communist China. Rau somewhat naively asked me whether there was any significance to fact that our offensive had coincided with Wu’s arrival and I assured Rau that to the best of my knowledge, and I was morally certain I was correct, the timing of the offensive bore no relation to arrival of Wu and I reminded Rau that the preparations for such an offensive required a long time, that it was launched on purely military rather than political considerations, and that none of us knew for a certainty of the date of arrival of Peiping group. [Gross.]