Foreign Relations of the United States, 1951, Korea and China, Volume VII, Part 1

S/S Files: NSC 101 Series

Memorandum by Max W. Bishop, Department of State Representative on the National Security Council Staff, of a Meeting Held on January 17

[Extract]

top secret

[Washington,] January 19, 1951.

Report of NSC Meeting—Wednesday, January 17, 1951

item 1—nsc 101/1 “u.s. action to counter chinese communist aggression”¹

The Secretary said that he had handed the Department’s draft of a new paper on this subject to Jimmy Lay with the request that it be circulated to the members for their information.² (It was not circulated at the meeting but was reproduced and distributed later by the Executive Secretariat). The Secretary stated to the Council that NSC 101/1 was quite inadequate and that the Department, in preparing its draft, had gone back to the JCS paper³ and taken some of their “objectives” and had added others. The Secretary went on to point out that there were three matters—the questions of a naval blockade, of removal of restrictions on air reconnaissance and of removal of restrictions on military operations against the mainland by Nationalist Chinese, which need a complete and careful study.

General Bradley remarked that so far as reconnaissance was concerned, the military merely wanted to “look around” Formosa and the neighboring mainland. He added that so far as Chiang Kai-shek is concerned, the Joint Chiefs had in mind that we should merely tell Chiang Kai-shek that he could now do whatever he wants to do and that we would do nothing, either to prevent or to assist Chiang Kaishek in any ventures he might undertake.

The Secretary asked for an expression from the Joint Chiefs regarding what they think, from a military standpoint, the Nationalist forces on Formosa could accomplish on the mainland.

Mr. Harriman suggested that perhaps the Department of State could prepare a memorandum giving its advice as to what the United States should now do about Chiang Kai-shek. The Secretary replied that we would undertake to prepare a memorandum on this subject.⁴ General Marshall remarked that he wondered when we would do something to Communist China. He added that someone may ask whether we are not paying “too big a price for Hong Kong”. General Bradley said that he gathered from his conversations with the British military that they hold pretty much the same view as we do regarding Communist China. Mr. Smith of NSRB made a long statement to the effect that we should do something now.

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1. Dated January 15, p. 79.
2. For the document under reference, see the attachment to the memorandum by Rusk, January 17, p. 1515.
3. Reference is to NSC 101, January 12, p. 70.
4. Most of the subsequent material in the NSC 101 series related to China rather than Korea and is printed on pp. 1474 ff.