Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, East Asia and the Pacific, Volume XII, Part 1

Eisenhower Library, Eisenhower papers, Whitman file

Memorandum of Discussion at the 200th Meeting of the National Security Council Held on Thursday, June 3, 1954¹

[Extracts]

top secret eyes only

June 3, 1954

The following were present at the 200th Meeting of the Council: The President of the United States, presiding; the Vice President of the United States; the Secretary of State; the Secretary of Defense; the Director, Foreign Operations Administration; and the Director, Office of Defense Mobilization. Also present were the Secretary of the Treasury; the Director, Bureau of the Budget; the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Director of Central Intelligence; Robert Cutler, Special Assistant to the President; the Deputy Assistant to the President; Robert R. Bowie, Department of State; Robert Amory, Jr., Central Intelligence Agency; the White House Staff Secretary; Bryce Harlow, Administrative Assistant to the President; the Executive Secretary, NSC; and the Deputy Executive Secretary, NSC.

Following is a summary of the discussion at the meeting and the main points taken.

5. U.S. Policy in the Event of Overt Unprovoked Military Aggression by Communist China

Mr. Cutler described a recent conference with the President² respecting the problem of U.S. action in the event of overt Chinese Communist aggression. The subject had arisen again as a result of French fears that the Chinese Communists might send MIG-15 planes over the Delta area and thus neutralize the French Air Force. Mr. Cutler then read pertinent paragraphs from the U.S. policy paper on Southeast Asia,³ and circulated to the members of the Council a proposed statement of policy⁴ designed to clarify U.S. policy in the event that Communist China committed overt unprovoked military aggression against Southeast Asia, Korea or Formosa. He read the proposed statement to the members of the Council.

The President commented that if the United States undertook to counter such Chinese Communist aggression alone, as seemed to be a possibility in the statement read by Mr. Cutler, such a course of action would mark the complete collapse of the American policy of united action with its allies around the world. Speaking with great conviction, the President went on to say that if our Pacific allies will not agree to join in action with us against overt Chinese Communist aggression, they would have in effect quit on us. Such an event would be the time for the “agonizing reappraisal” of basic U.S. security policy. The President said that he thought that it was right for the United States to commit armed forces to prevent overt Chinese Communist aggression, provided he was able to go to the Congress and say that we have allies such as Thailand, Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines, who are ready to join with us in resisting such aggression. If these nations, however, refuse to go along with us, the situation would be very different. All our significant allies would have collapsed. In these circumstances if the United States was to initiate a war, we ought to consider whether the war should not be against the USSR. Any thought of going into China alone, said the President, was completely contrary to all our basic objectives, and we had accordingly better change our policy.

With respect to the statement of policy which Mr. Cutler had read, the President said it certainly should be revised to include the assumption that if the President sought authority from Congress to use American armed forces against Communist China, such a move would be taken in concert with our Pacific allies. The President said that he realized that the main burden of such a war would have to fall on the United States. Our allies could be expected to provide little more than token forces. Nevertheless, reiterated the President, he did not wish the United States to stand alone before the world as an arbitrary power supporting colonialism in Asia.

Secretary Dulles pointed out that the issue we were talking about at the moment was not the issue of our pre-conditions for intervening in the current conflict in Indochina. The actual issue posed by overt Chinese Communist aggression was whether we would accept a direct and open challenge to the United States by Communist China. If the Chinese Communists committed an overt unprovoked aggression, this would be tantamount to a direct attack on the United States, since he and the President had already publicly warned the Chinese Communists of the grave results of such overt aggression against South Korea, Japan, Formosa, and Indochina. In addition to these public warnings, Secretary Dulles said that he had warned Molotov privately of the consequences of Chinese Communist aggression during the course of the Berlin Conference.⁵ If, in the face of all these warnings, both public and private, the Chinese Communists deliberately attacked any of the areas in question, Secretary Dulles said he would regard it as throwing down the gauge of battle to the United States. If we did not pick it up we might just as well get out of the Pacific. Secretary Dulles said that we should not permit our allies to exercise a veto power on what we did in the event of overt Chinese Communist aggression, for such aggression constituted an open threat to the United States position in the Pacific. At some point in time or space, some nation has got to be strong enough to stand up against further Communist aggression. If the United States makes this decision, Secretary Dulles predicted that other nations would join the United States in short order. We should not, however, let the willingness of our Pacific allies to concert with us become a condition to our action to repel overt Chinese Communist aggression. Finally, said Secretary Dulles, if the United States is really prepared to resist overt Chinese Communist aggression, it was very unlikely that the Chinese Communists would risk committing such aggression.

Secretary Wilson expressed the opinion that the Chinese Communists were very unlikely to resort to overt aggression. Instead, they would support revolutionary movements in their neighboring states. He then inquired of Secretary Dulles what the United States would do if the Chinese Communists were to send “volunteers” into the Indochina war. Would such a move constitute overt aggression?

Secretary Dulles said that the statement of policy, as read by Mr. Cutler, was merely intended to cover the very unlikely contingency of overt Chinese Communist aggression. Secretary Humphrey said that he would nevertheless like to hear an answer to Secretary Wilson’s question as to the definition of overt aggression.

Admiral Radford and several members of the Council suggested that the United States would have to decide what constituted overt aggression. Certainly the Chinese Communist intervention with “volunteers” in the Korean war constituted overt aggression.

The President reiterated his fear of leaving the United States alone to do the job of resisting overt Chinese Communist aggression without the support of other nations. He said that of course we would have to do this if failure to accept the challenge meant the loss of our own position in the Western Pacific. He was at a loss, however, to understand why we were compelled to tell the French and our other allies how we would respond to overt Chinese Communist aggression if they were not prepared to join with us in concerted action if this contingency should ever arise. He also stressed the vital importance of being able to tell the members of Congress, when he sought authorization, that we would have allies in any war we undertook to repel Chinese Communist aggression. If he could not say this much to the Congress, he doubted whether many of its members would understand what was really at stake.

Mr. Cutler suggested an amendment to the proposed statement of policy which introduced an assumption of concerted action but did not make concerted action a condition for the use of U.S. armed forces to resist overt Chinese Communist aggression. The President said he was sympathetic to such a revision, and again stressed the point that if none of our allies would go along with us in resisting the Chinese Communists, the decision confronting the United States would be much greater and more significant than the decision merely to bomb airfields, communications lines, and other facilities in Communist China which directly supported the Chinese Communist military effort. It would indeed be a decision whether the United States should go to all-out war with Communist China and bomb such cities as Peiping.

Secretary Dulles commented that of course no one wanted allies more than the United States. Some one of the nations, however, must take the lead. After all, the Australian Government, for example, could not commit itself in advance to joining us in resisting Chinese Communist aggression. That Government would have to secure the authorization to do this from the Australian Parliament, just as the President would from the U.S. Congress.

The President said that at the very least we could ask the governments of our Pacific allies to agree to request such authorization from their parliaments on the same day that the President himself sought such authorization from Congress.

Thereafter a number of suggestions were made to revise the original statement of policy. After a considerable interval, Secretary Dulles suggested the addition of a new paragraph which would permit the United States to reconsider its proposed course of action in the event of overt Chinese Communist aggression if our allies refused to concert with us in meeting this aggression.

(At this point the President and Secretary Dulles left the meeting because of previous engagements, and the Vice President took over the chairmanship of the Council.)

There followed a brief discussion of what course of action the United States would follow if the Chinese Communists hit Indochina with MIG-15’s. Admiral Radford stated that he was obliged to take up this issue with the Secretary of State at once, since the French were pressing for an answer to this question in the next day or two.

The Vice President then expressed the conviction that if the Chinese Communists moved overtly against any free country in the Asian area, and the United States, with allies or without them, did not move to resist such an aggression, “the jig was certainly up”. The Vice President reminded the Council not to forget that when North Korean forces moved into South Korea, President Truman undertook to resist the aggression without even consulting Congress. To him, said the Vice President, the question was not whether the United States would act in a similar contingency, but how it would act. Should we fight China, or should we fight Russia, we would certainly have to do something.

Secretary Wilson inquired as to the effect of the French loss of the Tonkin Delta. Admiral Radford replied that this would mean the loss of all the rest of Indochina to the Communists in very short order. The Communists want all of Southeast Asia, and seem to be in a fair way to get it. Mr. Allen Dulles expressed agreement with this view, and further predicted the loss of the Delta if extraordinary measures were not promptly taken to save it.

The Vice President then asked Mr. Bowie, who had taken Secretary Dulles’ place at the table, if it was not probable that the French would accept a settlement at Geneva which would be quite unsatisfactory to the United States. Mr. Bowie said that he agreed with the Vice President’s fears, and said that unless the Communists were hopelessly adamant, the French were very likely to accept some kind of partition of Indochina which would be unsatisfactory to the United States. Admiral Radford, however, expressed the opinion that the French would have no choice but to fight to save the Delta, if for no other reason than that they must evacuate approximately a hundred thousand civilians of French nationality or sympathy.

The Vice President then asked Mr. Bowie what official position the United States would take in the event that the French accepted a partition solution from the Communists which the United States regarded as unsuitable. Mr. Bowie replied that theoretically, of course, the United States could initially disassociate itself from any such French agreement, but from a practical point of view we would have to recognize the boundaries established by the partition agreement if the United States proposed to try to defend the rest of Southeast Asia against Communist control. He added that the situation would be further complicated if Bao Dai refused to accept a French settlement at Geneva and asked the United States what it was willing to do if the Vietnamese continued the war.

Admiral Radford expressed the opinion that Hanoi might be the sticking point for the French in their negotiations at Geneva. If the French lose this city the result would be militarily disastrous.

The National Security Council:⁶

a. Noted the views of the Secretary of State, as presented to and approved by the President on May 28, 1954, as to the nature of offensive action against Communist China which the United States should take in the event of overt unprovoked military aggression by Communist China.

b. Agreed that:

(1) U.S. policy should be that, if Communist China should commit overt unprovoked military aggression in the Western Pacific area or Southeast Asia:

(a) The President would at once request approval from Congress for use of the Armed Forces of the United States against Communist China to defeat the aggression; and

(b) The United States would seek to persuade our Pacific allies, Thailand, and other free nations to join in the action, with such help as each can give, and to support an appeal to the United Nations by the parties attacked.

(2) The Secretary of State should advise Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines, as parties to mutual security treaties with the United States, of the foregoing U.S. policy, and should seek to obtain the commitment that, if the contingency should occur, each of those governments would at once request authority, in accordance with its constitutional processes, to join in such action. If such commitments cannot be obtained, the U.S. policy expressed in (1) above will be subject to reexamination.

Note: The above action, as approved by the President, subsequently transmitted to the Secretary of State for implementation of subparagraph b-(2) thereof.

S. Everett Gleason

1. Drafted by Gleason on June 4.
2. Cutler’s memorandum of the conference held on June 2 is attached to his memorandum of that day to Dulles, supra.
3. NSC 5405, Jan. 16, p. 366.
4. It is not clear whether this is a reference to a possible draft of the Action or to some other unidentified paper.
5. For documentation on the Four-Power Conference at Berlin, Jan. 25–Feb. 18, see volume vii.
6. The following paragraphs a and b constitute NSC Action No. 1148. (S/S–NSC (Miscellaneous) files, lot 66 D 95)