Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volumes VII, VIII, IX, Arms Control; National Security Policy; Foreign Economic Policy, Microfiche Supplement

248. Memorandum from McGhee to Under Secretary, December 5¹

December 5, 1961

SUBJECT

• Basic National Security Policy

The attached draft represents a major effort of the entire Policy Planning Council during recent months. It attempts a fresh statement of Basic National Security Policy rather than a revision of NSC 5906/1. It seeks to formulate a coherent national strategy embracing all phases of our national effort, taking, as its central theme, the objective of a community of free nations.

It is now circulated for written comment, both as to concept and substance. I realize that it will need to undergo many changes of detail before it can hope to meet general approval. Your preliminary comments would be appreciated by December 15.

It is also proposed that the concept of the paper, not necessarily its substantive detail, might be discussed at the Secretary’s Policy Planning meeting. The date of December 12 is suggested.

George C. McGhee

Attachment

BASIC NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY

SUMMARY

1. Introduction. This paper outlines a strategy, which could provide a sense of coherence and direction to our total effort in the national security field. It is not intended to furnish a complete guide to every policy action, but rather to provide an over-all doctrine which will be relevant to the more important issues we face. Our decisions on these issues are most likely to be mutually consistent and reinforcing if they are based on a clearly defined strategic doctrine.

2. National Objective. Our basic national purpose is to help in the creation of a world environment in which a nation with values and purposes such as ours can flourish. Such an environment will be one in which countries can concert to promote their progress and security, without losing their freedom in the process. That environment can best be described as a “community of free nations”. A sustained US effort toward this end is needed not only to fulfill our positive purposes but also to defeat the Communist attempts to shape in their own image the order which will emerge from the present era of revolutionary change.

I. Needed Tasks

3. Constructive Tasks in Less Developed Countries. The community of free nations must be one in which less developed countries can progress toward becoming modern societies. We should use all the instruments of national policy—diplomacy, military aid, programming guidance and technical aid, capital assistance, and trade policy—to help them achieve evolutionary modernization. We should give higher priority to this objective than to the promotion of special ties with these countries or to securing their support for our political policies. We should urge other Atlantic countries and Japan to take the same view, and to act vigorously on it.

4. Defensive Tasks. The community of free nations must also be made secure against war and aggression. We should meet indirect aggression, the most urgent threat, primarily by strengthening the total capacity of governments under attack to mount effective politico-military programs in defense of their societies.

We should use US forces to defeat direct aggression in such a way as to defeat its purposes with minimum risk of escalation. This will require not only substantial and mobile conventional forces but also a reasonably stable overall strategic situation, i.e., one which is unlikely to degenerate into general nuclear war under the pressure of crises and limited conflicts. We should seek to create such an environment by maintaining an effective, invulnerable, and flexible nuclear striking force and by prosecuting adequate active and passive nuclear defense programs. The same purpose will be served by an arms control policy which looks to feasible stabilizing measures in the near term, e.g., safeguards against war by miscalculation and against nuclear proliferation, as well as to the long-term goal of general and complete disarmament.

II. Needed Framework

5. The Atlantic Community. To prosecute these constructive and defensive tasks we must mobilize the strength of nations, and groups of nations, which can deploy substantial resources beyond their borders. The European Community is such a grouping; we should vigorously support the movement toward European integration. A major purpose of US foreign policy should be to work toward an effective partnership between Europe and the US, through institutions of the Atlantic Community. We should seek vigorously to strengthen these institutions and the resulting capacity for common action. This partnership should be capable of embracing Japan in the economic sphere at the earliest possible time.

6. Other Ties Between Free Nations. We should, at the same time, seek to develop manifold ties, embracing as wide a range of human activities as possible, which will permit the developed and less developed nations to work effectively together, and which will limit their ability to harass each other or to act with utter irresponsibility. We should work to strengthen bilateral ties, regional associations, and the UN to this end. Such relationships are the warp and woof of the community of free nations.

7. Relations With Communist Nations. We should try to manage our relations with the Communist nations so that they will not divert us from constructive tasks in the free world, and so that they will promote long-term constructive evolution in the Bloc. To this end:

We should seek continuing communication with the Soviets, in business-like attempts to avoid crises and reduce the risk of war, and we should promote exchanges and cooperative ventures conducive to useful change in the USSR. When crises erupt, we should seek to resolve them in a way which will restore equilibrium without incurring the increased costs and risks that would be required to alter the existing balance of advantage drastically in our favor.

We should seek contacts, and extend and encourage assistance, designed to encourage helpful trends in Eastern Europe.

We should move toward policies which will place the onus for continued hostility between Communist China and the US more squarely on Peiping and thus mobilize greater free world support in resisting Chinese Communist expansion. We should try to create a political climate in which the Sino-Soviet rift will prosper; we should not go out of our way to make it look as though Khrushchev’s preference for negotiation over fighting is a vain one; and we should make clear that the contrary Chinese view, if put to the test, is likely to entail swift disaster.

Our response to the Soviet ideological offensive should center upon projecting and explaining our own efforts to build a community of free nations. We should promote a free world consensus on this central goal. We should not be drawn away from this goal by a presumed need to react to Communist political and propaganda initiatives, but should seek to keep the focus where it belongs: on our opportunities and affirmative purposes in the free world.

INTRODUCTION

Why Have a Basic National Security Policy Paper?

1. This paper is intended to define a strategic doctrine for US national security and to lay out the broad courses of action which seem required for its fulfillment.

2. Such a strategic doctrine may be helpful in different ways:

a. The President and his principal officers may find the doctrine helpful in determining which conflicting considerations should have first claim on their attention; in identifying long-term objectives which should be pursued as appropriate, regardless of efforts that might be required for immediate crises, and in ensuring that US responses to such immediate crises are consistent with their long-term policies.

b. The bureaucracy will be more likely to conform to national policy in its day-to-day operating decisions, if it is exposed to a clear and authoritative statement of the doctrine on which that policy is based.

c. Public support for needed measures to enhance our security, both in the US and other free countries, can more readily be secured if these measures are explained in terms of an over-all doctrine, which defines our long-term goals and sets forth a convincing strategy for their attainment.

3. In each of these respects, Winston Churchill’s statement is apposite: “Those who are possessed of a definite body of doctrine and of deeply rooted convictions upon it will be in a much better position to deal with the shifts and surprises of daily affairs than those who are merely taking short views, and indulging their natural impulses as they are evoked by what they read from day to day.” This paper is intended to provide that “definite body of doctrine”.

4. To meet this need, the doctrine must be sufficiently clear and concise to be readily borne in mind from day-to-day by those concerned. Its strategy must be understandable, appear reasonable and constitute a useful guide to a wide variety of decisions. A doctrine which cannot be remembered in its broad outlines, but must be continually consulted in detail, is not likely to weigh heavily in the making of decisions or in the shaping of attitudes. The doctrine can, then, only treat of broad strategy. Should it seek to do more, the resulting mass of detail would merely blunt and obscure its basic import.

PART ONE

OUR NATIONAL OBJECTIVE: A COMMUNITY OF FREE NATIONS

1. Our fundamental purposes as a nation have not changed since they were first set down in the Constitution:

“to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

2. The object of national security policy is to promote an international environment in which these purposes can be best assured.

3. We cannot do this merely by trying to sustain the status quo. For half a century such world order as we inherited from the nineteenth century has been breaking up under the impact of new forces. These forces are sufficiently extensive and powerful to ensure that the period ahead will continue to be one of unprecedented change.

4. If these forces of change cannot be contained by an attempt to maintain the status quo, neither can they be guided by ad hoc and piecemeal attempts to cope with their effect. For we face the challenge not only of a revolutionary age, whose pace and extent dwarfs previous changes in the condition of mankind, but also of Communist nations seeking to shape in their own image the new order which will emerge. These Communist efforts can be met successfully only if we have a clear view of the kind of world order we want to see develop.

5. The crux of the matter is thus whether we or the Communists are to organize the new world order. Our actions must be directed toward bringing into being the kind of world order we favor through peaceful and evolutionary means. We should have had such a purpose even if Marx and Lenin had never existed, but the need is the greater and more pressing since their heirs are now trying to impose their version of the future on all mankind.

6. The international order we seek to build must assure two pre-conditions to fulfillment of our national goal: peace, and freedom from Sino-Soviet control.

A world order which can assure peace must be able to generate enough power and will to deter or defeat attack.

A world order which can be assured against Sino-Soviet control must be able to assure progress by its members sufficient to convince them that their aspirations can be better fulfilled within its framework than without.

7. To discharge these constructive and defensive tasks, this world order must have a hard core of developed nations able and willing to pool their resources for such tasks beyond their borders; and must be able to draw these and the less developed nations together in a network of common ties which will direct their mutually reinforcing efforts to these ends.

8. We thus seek a world order which would be a genuine community of free nations. It would perform the normal functions of a community—i.e., help its members assure their material well-being and promote their security against outside attack—even though it lacked the organizational apparatus of one. It would enable its members to concert to meet these needs without either forming a super-state or losing their freedom. It would thus be sufficiently flexible in its arrangements to encompass the changing needs and aspirations of all free nations. It would be open to all nations willing to abide by its standards and accept its responsibilities. Its accomplishment would thus be a continuing task—open-ended, in the best sense of that term.

9. In our efforts to build such a pluralistic community, we will be pursuing a goal which commends itself more to most of mankind than the monolithic conformity of Communism. We can tolerate variety in the world; Communism cannot. If we fail of support among free peoples, it will be because we do not effectively articulate our goal, rather than because we are moving in what they consider to be the wrong direction. The community of free nations—should it be achieved—will rest on consensus, not coercion.

10. If we do articulate our goal effectively, we need not expect its appeal to be limited to the non-Communist world. The attractive power of a community whose members are able to assure the realization of their aspirations without losing their freedom should serve to weaken the bonds that now bind peoples under Communist rule to the Bloc. In the long run, changes may be induced in at least some of the Bloc states which would make it possible for them to adhere to the community.

PART TWO

NEEDED TASKS

Chapter 1: Constructive Tasks in the Less Developed Countries

I. Basic Purposes

1. Any effort to build and maintain an effective community of free nations must first of all address the constructive task of helping the members of the community achieve more rapid progress within a framework of interdependence. This task will, by its nature, center on the less developed areas. Politically active and literate groups in these areas have awakened to the fact that their lot can be improved by human effort. They demand that their countries achieve the national status, material base, and human well-being which they associate with a modern state.

2. Governments which try to repress or ignore these pressures are unlikely to survive over the long run. If these pressures cannot otherwise be fulfilled, they will likely lead to revolutionary change under extremist leaders. Some of these leaders may look to Communism, or something like it, for their salvation. Others may turn to foreign adventures or domestic policies which encourage international anarchy. In either case, progress toward a community of free nations would be retarded. Instead of evolving into responsible members of such a community, the less developed countries would succumb to weakness and instability and become subjects of ever growing great power rivalry—with disastrous results, both from their standpoint and ours.

3. It must be recognized that modernization will not guarantee a successful outcome even over the long term, and may actually lead to increased instability over the short term. This is a risk, however, that we must take. Although modernization will not lead to dramatic improvements in the living standard of the common man, it should provide a basis of hope for all that the future holds promise. A concerted national effort toward modernization can also help cement national cohesion, develop leadership groups with constructive objectives, reward the most vigorous elements of the developing nation, and subordinate sectional and local differences to sound national goals.

4. Whether progress is achieved will depend primarily on the efforts of the less developed countries themselves. Modernization is a complex social, cultural, political, and economic phenomenon, whose mainsprings must be found within the developing society itself.

5. External action can, however, make a useful—and, in some cases, indispensable—contribution. The less developed countries need to acquire physical resources, skills and knowledge from more developed countries. The US, Western Europe, and Japan can help to meet these needs. In so doing, they will help to create the ties which bind the community of free nations. Their assistance should permit the launching or acceleration of modernization programs which may be able, in the long run, to go forward increasingly without that help. The US should take the lead in seeking a consensus among other free developed countries as to the importance and nature of the task. The OECD is the place to seek that consensus, although NATO can also play a role in establishing political agreement among the Atlantic countries as to the urgency of the task.

6. The basic point on which to be clear is that the objective of the OECD countries in assisting less developed countries is to help them evolve into viable societies free from external domination—each an integral part of an interdependent community of free nations. Of course, the OECD countries also share other interests with the less developed areas—military, political, and economic. Actions to fulfill these interests must not, however, be permitted to retard the development of the community of free nations.

The varied instruments available to the US and other developed countries should each be directed to our primary purpose. These means are discussed below.

II. Major Instruments of Policy

7. Diplomacy. We should use our normal diplomatic contacts with the governments of less developed countries to encourage them to preoccupy themselves with the modernization process. Through confidential exchanges of ideas and information, and through diplomatic assistance, strong ties should be developed which will provide sinews for the community of free nations. Our industrialized allies should be encouraged along similar lines.

8. Information and Exchange Programs. Our information programs should stress the importance of modernization to the less developed countries’ survival and progress. They should help emerging elites in these countries to understand the nature and complexity of the development process and how to promote it. US and other OECD programs for the exchange of persons should seek to expose key groups in these countries to the wide range of skills and attitudes which have sparked development in the West. Such exchanges should result in strong national and personal sympathies and ties which can help to bind the community of free nations together.

9. MAP. Our military aid program can be helpful in encouraging and enabling the local military to take a constructive part in modernization, e.g. through development and education. We should make a conscious effort to exploit MAP, the US military missions that go with it, and the despatch of foreign military students to the US to this end. A consensus of aims and methods between military leaders and establishments will also contribute to the cohesion of the community of free nations.

10. Programming Guidance. The US should provide less developed countries with expert advice and personnel, as requested, in planning effective programs to modernize their societies. It should urge private and international agencies, as well as other governments, to play an ever larger role in the provision of programming guidance. We should demand no monopoly in this field.

11. Technical Assistance. The US and other OECD countries should also provide less developed countries with technical help in carrying out modernization programs. We should emphasize projects that will involve as many groups as possible in the modernization process. Here again, other advanced nations have a vital contribution to make and should be encouraged to do so. The wider the participation by free nations, private agencies, and international organizations in the provision of programming guidance and technical assistance, the greater will be the contribution to stronger ties within the community of free nations.

12. Capital. External capital should be offered in sufficient amounts and with enough continuity to provide a convincing incentive to less developed countries to go forward with needed programs and to mobilize fully their own resources in carrying them out. This will require a steadily rising level of capital assistance in the years ahead. A good share of this should come from other free industrial nations, and we should be active in promoting increased assistance by these countries. The US should promote OECD coordination of these efforts, and urge formation of OECD consortia to meet specially large and pressing needs.

Aid programs of the TMP and of the IBRD and its related organs—IDA and IFC—will generally be effectively directed to purposes which make sense in countries with development potential. The US should encourage maximum contributions to the international agencies’ programs and maximum recourse to them by the less developed countries.

Outside private investment should be encouraged, not only because of the capital it brings but also because of the exposure of local groups to the skills and attitudes which make up a business class—and the resulting ties which promote interdependence.

US assistance programs should emphasize projects that would assist in the growth of an indigenous entrepreneurial class, which can be the driving motor in further economic development. This will require aid for needed infrastructure in the public sector, as well as new enterprises in the private sector. Pragmatic—rather than ideological—considerations should guide our decisions regarding relative amounts of aid for these activities. We should be careful to avoid giving the appearance of seeking to impose our own patterns of thought and economic activity on less developed countries.

13. Surpluses. Provision of US agricultural surpluses to less developed countries can also be an important part of this capital assistance, and should be consciously geared to the promotion of economic development.

14. Criteria. The US should urge donor countries to agree in the OECD on realistic criteria for national aid programs, which would encourage and reinforce self-help by the receiving countries. If countries conform to these criteria, they should not be discriminated against because they do not align themselves with us in the cold war or agree with all of our policies. Such discrimination will not alter their views, it will merely slow down their modernization and thus make them more vulnerable to instability and subversion. And the fact of our effort to associate political “strings” with our aid will sit poorly with other less developed countries.

In applying criteria designed to encourage self-help, we should recognize that such criteria will have limited relevance in some countries. These will be countries with out early potential for development or self-support whose needs must nonetheless be met if disintegration of non-Communist societies is to be avoided.

It is important to bear in mind, moreover that even those countries with development potential fall into different categories, and that the criteria for aid must vary among these categories.

(a) In countries which are still close to the traditional stage, we can hardly insist that applicant governments have comprehensive development programs—much less the means of executing them—at hand. In these countries, we should judge, and provide aid for, elementary pre-development needs on their individual merits: resource surveys, training and education programs, help in creating needed institutions, and capital in such basic fields as agriculture and transport.

(b) In countries which have broken with their traditional way of life but have not yet fully committed themselves to modernization, our object should be to encourage modernization programs of the required scope and effectiveness. We should hold out the prospect of assistance on terms which these countries can realistically expect to meet if they make the requisite effort.

(c) In countries that are fully launched on the process of modernization, we should insist on conformity with strict criteria. Indeed, it is in these countries’ interest that we do so.

15. Soviet Aid. The OECD countries should not generally be diverted from the carrying out of their own positive programs of assistance by efforts to “counter” Soviet aid. They should recognize that Soviet attempts to subvert less developed countries will best be frustrated by progress in these countries, and they should gear their own aid primarily to promoting that progress.

Efforts to preclude Bloc aid should be limited to a few key and sensitive sectors (such as police, education, and planning) in countries where this tactic promises permanent, rather than temporary, success. In a few cases, US aid may be able to support efforts of countries attempting to avoid overdependence on Bloc aid and trade. Such cases should not set a pattern whereby US aid appears highly correlated with solicitation of Bloc aid offers.

16. Trade. Exports are roughly ten times as large a source of foreign exchange for less developed countries as capital assistance. Trade also provides the greatest opportunity to develop permanent, mutually advantageous, and freely accepted ties between peoples and nations. It is the warp and woof of a community of free nations. The OECD nations should accord high priority to measures for giving the developing countries free access to their markets.

The US should eventually be prepared to join Japan and the European Community in reducing their restrictions on certain imports from the less developed countries on an across-the-board basis. We should not expect symmetrical concessions from these countries. The burden of absorbing increased imports of any given product will be less onerous if it can be shared by all of the major industrial countries. Steps to reduce barriers to imports from less developed countries will have to follow steps by them to free up trade in industrial goods and to concert about their agricultural trade and production. The United States may need to take domestic measures to facilitate adjustment by the industries most affected to an increased volume of imports. It should urge other OECD countries to do the same, as needed.

17. Commodity Price Stabilization. The problem of price stability of primary products is no less important than that of the less developed countries’ export volume. Fluctuations in export prices of primary producers and the resulting instability in foreign exchange earnings of less developed countries seriously hamper their economic development programs. Only if there is price stability will there be the needed financing and incentive for increased production. Just as nations must face this problem internally, a community of free nations must face it if it is to achieve wide acceptance.

The long run remedy for price instability is sustained growth and economic diversification in these countries. In the meantime, it is essential that the OECD states examine together means for reducing specific commodity price instabilities and for mitigating adverse effects of wide market variations on over-all export earnings of less developed countries.

18. Change in Culture and Attitudes. In all of this, one cardinal point should be borne in mind: Although the pace and process of modernization will vary from country to country, its success will hinge in most countries more on a real determination to achieve progress—with all that this involves in the way of effort—risk and innovation—than on any other single factor. A major purpose of our aid should be to generate the change of cultural attitudes which will produce this determination in as wide a range of the social groups in the less developed countries as possible. As these groups come to share our view of the modernization process, a consensus between us on this important front will strengthen the bases of the community of free nations.

Assistance for education can help to generate this kind of change in attitude by opening up new intellectual horizons for tradition-bound groups. Assistance for improved transport, connecting rural areas with modern cities, can serve the same purpose by exposing these groups to modern values and influences. These two cases are cited to illustrate a general policy, which we should constantly seek to devise new ways of applying and carrying forward.

19. Political Change. Political, as well as cultural change will be required to promote modernization. One of our major objectives in providing capital to less developed areas should be to assist and promote reforms, notably in regard to taxation and land tenure, which would weaken the power of tradition-minded elites which resist modernization. The Alliance for Progress is a promising approach to this objective.

We must recognize that, as modern-minded groups become more numerous, they will demand more and more from the traditionally privileged. The latter will, in turn, be increasingly reluctant to make concessions which threaten their positions. It is all the more important to ensure that promising modern opportunities are also open to the more flexibly-minded among the traditionally privileged, so that they too can become identified with the modern order if they wish.

We must expect many abrupt and often immoderate changes as countries thus move toward more modern ways. Due to the less rigid organization of center parties, moderate leaders will be alternately attacked by both extreme left and right and under pressure by both to seek their protection. The course of progress will not be an easy one, but it would be greatly assisted by the emergence of powerful Center political parties, offering modern-minded elements a constructive alternative to more violent extremes. We should use our influence discreetly to help bring this about, where feasible.

Chapter 2: Defensive Tasks

1. It should be our purpose to shield the constructive task of building a community of free nations, insofar as possible, from interruption and disruption at Communist hands. This means, among other things:

(a) Maintaining and using military strength along the frontiers of the community of free nations, and within the community, to deter or defeat aggression against its members.

(b) A sustained effort to create a stable strategic military environment, which will not automatically dissolve into general nuclear war under the pressure of crises and limited violence.

Efforts to meet these two needs are discussed in Sections I and II, below.

2. The common keynote to these efforts is that they are geared to defensive, rather than offensive, purposes.

3. Given our estimate of Bloc intentions and capabilities, the chances of “winning” the present competition by using or threatening force to roll back the frontiers of the Bloc seem slim. Given our faith in the greater effectiveness and attractive power of a community of free nations, our chances of winning that competition through success in our constructive programs seem good. These programs would tend to be disrupted by military conflict. The gains which we might achieve through an aggressive military or diplomatic strategy would thus probably be outweighed by the damage such a strategy might do to our basic goals.

I. Uses of Force

4. Making clear our will to resist any aggressive use of force should, of course, be our first line of defense. Collective security pacts, bilateral treaties, unilateral statements, and token US deployments abroad—all contribute to deterring aggression. But none are likely to have the intended effect unless we are, in fact, ready to use defensive force, as necessary.

5. We should beware of enticing arguments for not doing so, e.g., Berlin is “indefensible” or Vietnam is “peripheral.” Circumstances beyond our control have drawn the borders of the free world where they now stand, and in most contested areas we have, either implicitly or explicitly, associated ourselves with its defense. If we draw back, the Communists will be encouraged to test us elsewhere and our allies will be discouraged from resolute resistance to Communist threats and aggressions. We should, however, seek to minimize the commitment of US prestige to defense of positions which are not clearly within the borders of the free world, unless we intend to fight to hold them.

6. Direct Aggression. When the threat is one of direct aggression, we should be ready to meet it by despatching US forces, preferably in concert with other free world nations, to the assistance of the country under attack. Deployment of US forces and their supplies overseas should be such as to permit rapid and effective action to this end.

Our aim in such action should generally be to restore a situation comparable to the one which existed before the aggression, and to do this with minimum risk of general nuclear war. The scale and scope of allied military operations should be related to this aim.

Early initiation of use of nuclear weapons would not be consistent with this objective, since there is a significant probability that it would lead to counter-use. Use of nuclear weapons should only be initiated if it is wholly clear that the aggression cannot otherwise be defeated and if a careful calculation shows that it would be possible, should the Communists respond with nuclear weapons, to draw net advantage from a limited local exchange of these weapons.

If nuclear weapons must be used because the aggression cannot otherwise be defeated, the initial use should be limited and selective, geared if possible to the essentially political purpose of demonstrating firm intent with minimum risk of escalation. If our political use of nuclear weapons fails to dissuade the Communists from continuing the aggression, nuclear weapons should be used to seek a military decision. We should strike at military targets directly related to the fighting, on the minimum scale needed to end that fighting. Where consistent with the object of achieving a military decision, nuclear weapons should not be used against the territory of the USSR and Communist China.

We should seek to deter the kinds of Communist counter-use which would lead to rapid escalation. We should make clear that any Soviet attack on Western cities and/or strategic delivery systems would lead us to attack these systems with such force as might be required to destroy them.

7. Indirect Aggression. Our national strategy must recognize that the more likely threat to the less developed countries will be that of indirect aggression. Local groups, often with clandestine support from abroad, will be used to seek control of a part or all of the country. This type of internal subversion can escalate, through guerrilla revolt, to conventional civil war with foreign involvement. The battlefield of such an attack is the society itself, since that society furnishes most of the resources, motivations and targets of the struggle.

A comprehensive development program calculated to minimize dissidence and meet popular aspirations—starting at the village level, is the best preventive action. Such a program should be mounted, wherever possible, before dissatisfaction reaches the point of unrest.

If indirect aggression nonetheless boils over, our primary response should be to enhance the over-all strength of the government under attack. We should encourage it to use this strength to win back dissident elements supporting the hard-core of rebel leadership. This will require a combination of balanced internal security capabilities (police, dual-purpose armed forces, adequate intelligence).

The US role should be to advise, finance, and train and equip indigenous personnel. We will be better able to perform this role if appropriate emphasis is placed on means of countering irregular warfare in US aid, training, research and development, and other national security programs. We should develop programs which are geared to the problems and tensions of vulnerable societies in their totality, and which seek to bring to bear appropriate politico-military responses through indigenous leadership.

US combat troops should be committed only if they would clearly have a decisive effect in meeting an indirect aggression which could not be contained in any other way. This will rarely be the case. US troops will seldom be adequate substitutes for properly trained and oriented indigenous troops acting under local leadership, in programs intimately related to local conditions. Their introduction will, on the other hand, involve some risk of a counter-productive local response and some danger of escalation—due both to Communist reactions and to the frustrations that would be generated in the US by prolonged use of US forces in the prolonged, ambiguous, subtle and difficult tasks of suppressing internal rebellions.

Proposals for meeting the threat of indirect aggression by large scale air and/or ground attack on its external source should be viewed with skepticism.

If we cannot successfully meet the aggression on its own terms—i.e., by developing indigenous leadership which can prevail, widening the war will probably not protect the government under attack. If we can discharge the task, widening the war may well be unnecessary. Large scale attack on the external source of aggression would, moreover, probably lead to Chinese Communist or Soviet counter-action, with possibilities for escalation that are, quite literally, incalculable. Our effort to build a community of free nations might be greatly slowed, if not wholly halted, by the resulting spreading hostilities.

8. Role of Other Countries. In all these actions, we should seek to persuade our major European allies, as well as any countries in the area with the needed capability, to make their full contribution.

The will and ability of less developed countries to make an effective external contribution to such military actions will not generally be great, however.

We should not posit military aid programs or contingency plans on the assumption that these countries will do more than contribute to their own defense.

In increasing their capability to defend themselves, priority should be given to the most urgent threat they face. Where this threat is internal, we should help these countries to develop effective counter-guerrilla and related capabilities. We should not generally burden less developed countries in this category with ambitious military programs to meet direct external aggression, as well. This would merely prevent economic progress needed to meet the internal danger.

A few less developed countries may face an urgent threat of direct external aggression, however. In these countries we should try to build up local armies which could complement our own forces in resisting direct aggression. Even here, we should not press this effort to the point of diverting local resources and energies from needed internal tasks. It is more in our interest to maintain a US military establishment which will be sufficient to meet the external threat than to urge these countries to military programs which might threaten their viability.

We must recognize, of course, that these countries’ military programs will only partly be subject to our influence. Where local governments are determined to maintain larger armies than we believe wise, it will still be in our interest to try to help these armies become a force for responsible leadership and effective modernization of the country concerned, and to orient them generally toward the free world. Such an effort by the US will be especially relevant in the case of African and Latin American countries, which seem determined to maintain the military trappings of sovereignty even if no external threat is at hand. These countries’ armies may well play a major role—for better or worse—in their countries’ economic and political life; we should not cut ourselves off from them merely because they are wasteful and unnecessary.

It may sometimes help to persuade less developed countries not to mount larger forces than are required if we give them guarantees of prompt and effective US military action in case of attack, e.g., through security pacts. We should not, however, allow ourselves to be trapped in a vicious circle, in which we find ourselves providing aid for still larger forces in order to keep these pacts alive.

9. The threat of aggressive use of force has so far been discussed in terms of Communist action. The problem is more difficult. Forceful change is also sometimes threatened by the threats of non-Communist countries against each other. It might conceivably also be threatened by a desire on the part of one or more of them to fight Communist nations when this was not required for defensive purposes.

A prime object of US policy should be to avoid allowing non-Communist countries thus to trigger hostilities which might either create opportunities for Communist expansion or involve the US in unnecessary conflict. To this end:

(a) We should keep our more hot-headed allies on a tight logistic leash, seek to develop joint command arrangements which would give us a voice in their forces’ use, and work out joint contingency plans which would orient these forces to defensive purposes in case of local hostilities.

(b) Regional arms control should be favored, particularly when it is proposed by the countries concerned. Tacit agreement with the Bloc for restraint in shipping arms to troubled areas, e.g., Africa and the Arab countries and Israel, might be helpful. Normal intelligence techniques might be sufficient to ascertain whether such an agreement was being generally observed.

(c) We should try to enhance UN procedures for peaceful settlement of disputes and use them wherever feasible. Stand-by arrangements for sending UN patrol forces to meet emergency needs should be strengthened. We should seek to improve UN command and staff organization, to expand training for UN functions, and to secure earmarking of additional forces for possible service with the UN to this end.

(d) We should focus on situations, e.g., West New Guinea, which might explode into local conflict between free nations, and try to initiate preventive diplomatic action before the event.

All these kinds of action will serve our basic purpose shielding the community of free nations against violence and aggression—no less directly than will our preparations to meet Communist attack.

II. A Stable Military Environment

1. Our ability to shield the community of free nations from aggression will depend not only on the specific use of force to meet or deter aggression but also on the overall military environment within which such use takes place. Measures to create a stable military environment, i.e., one which will not readily deteriorate into general nuclear war under the pressure of crises and limited conflicts, are discussed below in relation to US military and arms control programs.

A. Military Programs

2. Strategic Forces. The US should give the Soviets no reason to doubt our will to use nuclear striking power, if necessary. We should maintain a strategic force which is:

(a) sufficiently effective so that Sino-Soviet aggressive power clearly could not survive its all-out use;

(b) sufficiently invulnerable so that its survival need not rest on (i) striking first, (ii) our taking such “crash” measures in a crisis to reduce its vulnerability as the Soviets might consider evidence of impending attack; or (iii) an instant US response to ambiguous evidence of impending enemy attack;

(c) sufficiently flexible to be susceptible of discriminating and controlled use against a wide variety of alternative target systems—both in any initial use, and in continuing hostilities in accordance with assured continuity in decision-making.

3. Non-Nuclear Forces. A second major element in a stable military environment must be a Free World capability to use force within certain limits without taking actions involving a high probability of nuclear war. The contribution that overseas forces might make to this capability has already been discussed. To this same end, the US should maintain non-nuclear forces in the continental US which are:

(a) sufficiently substantial so that they could, in conjunction with foreign forces and US forces abroad, contain aggression short of all-out Soviet or Chinese Communist attack without using nuclear weapons;

(b) sufficiently mobile so that they could respond promptly and in needed numbers to two simultaneous threats in distant parts of the world;

(c) sufficiently flexible to be susceptible of use—both by themselves and in support of other countries’ forces—in irregular and sub-belligerent, as well as regular, military operations;

(d) sufficiently ready so that they could accomplish these purposes without large mobilization of US reserves. We cannot assume that the threats we will have to face will be so infrequent, dramatic, and unambiguous as to make recurring reserve call-ups a feasible or desirable means of meeting them.

4. Active and Passive Defense. A third major element in a stable military environment must be sufficient US defense against Soviet nuclear attack to assure, and hence to make clear to the Soviets, that the US Government:

(a) would be able to function and to dispose of its remaining resources in an organized fashion after general nuclear war;

(b) could protect the civil population sufficiently to count on popular support in facing up to the threat of general nuclear war.

Active defense of the continental US contributes to these purposes. Few actions would so change the world scene as the development of a genuinely effective anti-ballistic missile capability by either side. Research and development directed to this problem should have high priority.

Passive defense programs, including fall-out shelters, should also be carried out as needed to serve the purposes outlined above. It follows from the basic doctrine set forth in this paper that care should be taken not to generate such an undue popular preoccupation with these programs as to divert public attention and energies from other tasks needed to achieve a community of free nations.

B. Arms Control

5. US policy regarding arms control should have the same basic purpose as our military programs: to create a stable military environment, in which our security can be assured with minimum risk of nuclear war.

6. General Disarmament. To this end we should continue to propose a phased program for the achievement of general and complete disarmament.

Such a program must be one that is consistent with our goal of community of free nations. Thus, it must ensure that disarmed nations can pursue legitimate international goals at least as effectively as they do today. And it must equally ensure that the right of these nations to determine their own political, economic, and social system is at least as effectively protected as it is today.

A disarmament policy that satisfies these conditions must seek to develop, parallel to the curtailment and ultimate abandonment of national military power, the growth of international mechanisms, including international force, which will permit international relations to proceed in such a way that change and evolution occur peacefully and in broad directions consistent with our long-term goals.

7. Limited Arms Control. While seeking agreement with the Soviets on such a comprehensive program, we should also press for consciously limited measures designed to reduce the more explosive possibilities inherent in possession of national armaments.

One element of such a limited program should be measures to reduce the risk of war by accident or miscalculation. This should be given very high priority, and actively pursued. Consideration should be given to negotiating on this matter through procedures and in a forum different from that in which more comprehensive and complicated programs dominate the stage, and thus create a highly charged propaganda atmosphere.

A second main purpose of limited arms control should be to reduce the risk of nuclear proliferation to other national governments, e.g., by an agreement between the nuclear powers not to give warheads into the national custody of other countries, and by an agreement to cease production of fissionable materials for weapons purposes, which might also involve nuclear stockpile reductions.

In the long run, other stabilizing measures may also be feasible. As both sides achieve increasingly effective and invulnerable missile capabilities, for example, it may be possible to consider agreements to abate great power competition in missiles and also in the stockpiling of nuclear weapons. Prevention, or at least inhibition, of the extension of arms competition to outer space and celestial bodies could also serve a stabilizing purpose.

Total nuclear disarmament is unlikely of early achievement. So long as we and the Russians alike possess the enormous but somewhat inhibited power of the thermonuclear weapon, however, its sobering effects will continue to obtain in some measure. If we can supplement these sobering effects by other measures likely to inhibit a resort to arms, we may then have the best of an imperfect world, until general disarmament comes about.

PART THREE

A FRAMEWORK FOR NEEDED TASKS

Chapter 1: The Atlantic Community and Japan

A community of free nations can only be built if some of its members are willing and able to deploy substantial resources beyond their borders in prosecuting the needed constructive and defensive tasks which have been outlined. Given the realities of power, this will and ability must be found largely in the US, Western Europe, and Japan.

I. The United States

1. Economic Base. A higher rate of economic growth than has been achieved in recent years will be needed to generate an increasing level of resources for US assistance and security programs, to give convincing evidence to other countries of the attractive power of our social and economic system, and to ensure that the US continues to be the leading workshop and trading partner of a community of free nations. Our broad national objective should be to achieve the annual average of 4.2% growth in gross national product agreed on at the OECD in November, 1961. Achievement of this objective will be dependent, in some degree, on government action.

Fiscal, tax, and monetary policies should be such as to permit fulfillment of this growth objective without generating such continuing inflation as would impair public morale, divert labor and capital to uneconomic purposes, and prevent a balance in our international payments. This balance should be sought through policies which will assist, or at least not slow down, progress toward an effective world community—e.g., by seeking to improve the US competitive position, lower world trade barriers, and promote US exports.

2. Political Base. Sustained US public support and understanding will also be needed to prosecute the broad strategy outlined in this paper.

This will only be forthcoming if a clear sense of direction and meaningful effort can be conveyed to the American people—a sense which outweighs the effect of particular interests, partisan passions, and traditional prejudices.

To convey that sense, the general strategy that is being followed by the US should be laid before the American people with the same candor as within the executive branch. Specific measures for which public support is being sought should be related to this strategy, in public expositions, wherever possible.

II. The European Community

3. The resources of Western Europe will only add up to an effective grouping if the separate European nations pool these resources in common enterprises. The beginnings of concerted action to this end are to be seen in the European Community.

4. The guiding rule of our European policy should be to enhance the strength and cohesion of this Community within a broader Atlantic framework.

5. We should encourage any tendency in the Community to extend its integration into the political field. We should not be deterred by fears of a “third force,” which would play the US and USSR off against each other. The danger that a united Europe will deliberately follow policies that favor the Communists is slight. Much more real is the danger that Europe will be induced by a sense of internal division and external weakness not to react vigorously to efforts to extend Communist influence into the less developed areas. This danger will be reduced in proportion as European strength and confidence is enhanced within an effective Atlantic Community.

6. We should encourage the UK to participate fully in the movement toward integration, both to strengthen that movement and to balance present Franco-German leadership. We should be chary of “special” US bilateral relation with the UK, which might serve as a bar to its full integration within the European Community.

7. We should use such influence as we can exercise on German events to support those German leaders and groups which believe that the European Community should be the main focus of Germany’s foreign policy. An increasing absorption in the affairs of that Community will be the best safeguard against a recrudescence of irresponsible nationalism in German national life and policy.

The danger of such a recrudescence may grow as time shows no signs of weakening or eroding Soviet control of East Germany. We should represent to German opinion that the most effective way of moving toward reunification lies in enhancing the strength, stability, and attractive power of the European Community into which East Germany might eventually be absorbed. We should make clear that we do not abandon the goal of reunification as one hoped-for outcome of building this Community. The credibility of this posture will be enhanced by a firm defense of the freedom of West Berlin, and of the Western presence in and access to West Berlin, since West Berlin is a symbol of reunification to German opinion.

III. US-European Partnership

8. A closer partnership between the US and an integrated Europe within the Atlantic Community will become the more feasible as progress is achieved toward European integration; the US can work more effectively with a single integrated Europe than with several weaker European nations. Despite obvious obstacles, resulting partnership should be capable of embracing Japan in the economic sphere at the earliest possible time.

9. Economic Base. If these nations are to engage in undertakings abroad on the scale required to build a larger community of free nations, they must devote increasing resources to this purpose. This means that they will need to take joint—as well as individual national—steps to accelerate their economic growth.

The US should negotiate with the European Community and Japan for drastic across the board reductions in restrictions on trade in industrial goods. This will permit these countries to achieve more effective use of their resources and hence more rapid growth. The benefits of any agreed cuts should be extended to other countries. Attempts to promote freer non-discriminatory trade on a worldwide basis should be prosecuted with utmost vigor; they make a vital contribution to economic health of the free world.

These advanced countries should also eventually seek to concert on steps regarding production, trade, and pricing of the agricultural commodities which they produce in surplus amounts.

Progress along these lines will create an atmosphere in which it will be easier for them to agree on reductions in present restrictions on imports from less developed areas, such as were discussed earlier in this paper.

The European Community, the US, and Japan should also seek to accelerate their growth by coordinating their monetary and fiscal policies. They should work to develop or strengthen international monetary arrangements that make it possible for them to pursue multilateral and non-discriminatory trade. These will include measures to limit destabilizing movements of liquid funds, and arrangements for making effective use of present world reserves. This may require new institutions.

Such monetary and fiscal policies will permit these countries to press forward with expansionist domestic policies without undue fear of generating costly and disruptive imbalances in their international payments.

Over the long run, steps toward still closer US economic association with the European Community may be feasible and desirable. The form that these steps might take cannot now be defined, but the possibility of such closer association should be constantly before us.

10. Military Base. The European countries will be more likely to join the US in needed tasks throughout the free world if they have some assurance that their home base will be reasonably secure against Soviet threats and military pressures.

(a) They must believe that adequate nuclear power will be available to deter or defeat all-out attack upon them. We should assure them that US strategic forces will cover targets essential to the defense of NATO Europe and seek to develop with them guidelines and procedures for consultation and decision regarding use of these strategic forces.

This may not, however, be enough. We should, therefore, also be willing to explore with our allies the concept of a multilaterally owned and controlled sea-borne NATO MRBM force, as outlined by the President in his Ottawa speech. Use of this force would be on the basis of guidelines and procedures agreed to by our allies. In the process of exploring this concept with our allies, we could determine whether sufficient pressures existed to warrant our seriously considering procedures which would permit the force to be used under certain conditions without our consent.

Even if the European countries were unable to agree on decision-making procedures which would make it feasible to establish this force, the mere fact of our having proposed it should help to reduce fears of US willingness to use nuclear weapons in Europe’s defense. Even if the decision-making formula were agreed upon and left uncertainty as to whether the force would ever be used, the basic credibility of the nuclear deterrent to Soviet attack would not be affected since the bulk of that deterrent could remain under US control.

It should be recognized that there are grave risks and difficulties associated with proceeding along these lines. The alternative, if European concerns cannot otherwise be met, is probably a growing pressure for the creation of separate nuclear capabilities by individual European countries. This would generate fears and divisions more grievous than any now resulting from the US nuclear monopoly.

We should continue our existing policy of opposing and discouraging any movement in this direction (i) by refusing assistance for the French national nuclear program; (ii) by trying to phase the UK out of its independent strategic program—which stimulates France to wish to follow suit; and (iii) by refusing to deploy additional MRBM’s to the forces of individual European countries, since this deployment would tend to evolve into de facto national nuclear capabilities, whether or not the resulting forces were committed to SACEUR.

(b) A sound military base for a confident European association with the US must also be one which convinces European nations that they could defeat non-nuclear aggression short of all-out Soviet attack without destroying themselves in the process. They have so far viewed US attempts to lead them in building up an improved conventional capability with suspicion, since they believe that these attempts reflect a US desire to disengage from their nuclear defense. The matter will appear in a different light if the steps referred to under (a) above are also being taken: The Europeans will be more likely to welcome US leadership in a defense policy that will enable them to defeat and survive limited attacks, if they believe that this policy will also deter all-out attack.

US leadership in enhancing Europe’s non-nuclear capabilities will only be effective, however, if it involves more than exhortations. Maintenance of substantial US forces on the continent, continuing modernization of these forces, and US participation in cost-sharing arrangements which distribute the defense burden equitably through the alliance as a whole will all be needed.

11. With a secure military base and expanding resources the US and Western Europe should, with Japan as their partner in some cases, be able to cooperate more effectively in meeting the needs of the rest of the free world.

We should continue the effort which the Secretary of State inaugurated at the NATO meeting in Oslo to persuade the other NATO countries that there are no areas peripheral to their vital interests.

This can best be done if there is full and frank consultations with these countries about the best use of our combined resources. We come closest to doing this in our relations with the UK. We should increasingly treat France and Germany, the European Community as it emerges, as well as Japan in certain fields, with the same candor and intimacy. These entities are more likely to act the part of powerful and responsible allies if we treat them as such.

The forum for concerting about defensive tasks is NATO. We should be forthcoming in our NATO consultation, and seek to strengthen and extend the use of NATO for this purpose.

The forum for concerting about constructive tasks is the OECD. The US should take the lead in pressing for increased consultation in this forum. OECD’s organizational arrangements should be sufficiently flexible to reflect the fact that Japan is an indispensable partner in many of these tasks; some of the OECD members are not.

It is essential to continue our efforts to strengthen NATO and the OECD as European integration goes forward. The best way to guard against a stronger Europe becoming a “third force” is to bind it tightly to the US through ever more effective Atlantic institutions.

Chapter 2: Other Ties Between Nations

1. The community of free nations is based on the sum total of all the manifold ties—private and public, tangible and intangible—which bind its members to each other. These ties make it possible for them to work together with good effect, and limit their ability to harass each other or to act with irresponsibility. The development of such ties cannot be forced, but must flow normally from the development of a consensus of views, the sharing of common ideals and aspirations, and the existence of a true “community” feeling. Such ties can, however, be developed by public and private initiatives, properly timed, where the precondition for them already exists. Bilateral, regional, and worldwide measures to this end are discussed below.

2. US Bilateral Ties. We should seek to strengthen bilateral ties between the US and other free countries—whether they are allies or neutral. A wide variety of activities can serve this purpose, aside from the day-to-day conduct of diplomatic affairs, e.g., the Peace Corps, the people-to-people program, reciprocal state visits, tourism, and the exchanges of people.

3. Other Developed Countries’ Bilateral Ties. We should encourage other developed nations at the “core” of the community of free nations to maximize their contacts with the less developed nations, on a basis of consent, mutual interest, and self-respect. Concentrations of influence such as the Dutch once exerted in Indonesia and the Belgians in the Congo would thus increasingly be substituted for in a given country by the composite influence of a number of free developed countries.

4. Bilateral Ties Between Less Developed Countries. We should urge the less developed nations also to increase bilateral ties among each other, and encourage any tendency among them to pool their sovereignty in larger units. Where disputes between them hinder this process, we should consider remedies: UN action, or an offer of good offices by the US or some third nation or grouping, e.g., the Commonwealth.

5. Regional Ties. We should encourage regional ties and groupings among the less developed countries, wherever a significant desire and sound basis for such ties exists. These ties are more often a result, than a cause, of basic drives for regionalism, but initiatives to stimulate or exploit them can sometimes be helpful. Where the possibility exists of formalization of constructive groupings, we should provide incentives in the form of assistance to group enterprises. Within regional groupings, differences between neighbors may tend to become submerged to the exigencies of the group. Groups can thus achieve constructive results which would not be attainable by individual nations. Bilateral relationships are also more intimate and meaningful between members of a group.

6. Economic Regionalism. The US should encourage any less developed countries that may wish to do so to form not only political associations but also regional customs unions or free trade areas that conform to GATT criteria. It should support arrangements of this kind, or other regional trading arrangements in the less developed areas, that would lead to the competitive exploitation of larger markets.

7. OAS. The OAS is a prime example of a useful regional grouping. After the Atlantic Community, it is the most effective grouping of which we are a member. We should continue to value our membership, and take care that our participation in other groupings does not detract from the attention and energy that we devote to strengthening of the OAS. We should seek to remove or reduce obstacles to its effectiveness; e.g., by working to isolate the Cuban government and Castroist movements in the Hemisphere.

We should support other regional activities in the Americas, such as the Economic Commission for Latin America and the embryonic common market areas under discussion in Central and South America.

8. Africa. Here is an area in which closer regional ties could help to minimize some of the more dangerous consequences of Balkanization. We should encourage any tendency on the part of the African states to concert for the peaceful settlement of disputes, arms limitation, and the promotion of improved transport and economic development. We should not exaggerate the likely pace of progress, however.

9. Asia. We should also seek increased regional cooperation among Asian countries along the rim of Communist China. We should exploit existing instruments and seek to create new ones to this end.

In the economic field, the Columbo Plan Organization brings many of these countries together with each other and with countries from outside the region in pursuits which they rightly conceive to be in their interest. It is thus a significant force both for regional cohesion and for closer ties between the region and the West. We should support and strengthen it, and also ECAFE, in any way we can.

There is no grouping in the security field which commands such widespread local support in Asia. We should continue to support the two existing regional security pacts, SEATO and ANZUS, so long as they appear to enjoy sufficient acceptance among their members to outweigh any divisive effects which they may have in free Asia as a whole. If possibilities for new and more effective regional groupings in defense of Southeast Asia open up, we should exploit them. We should be willing to submerge SEATO in any such groupings if this would enhance their chances of coming about.

We should also explore the possibility of finding common ground in the economic field, on which to base a Pacific Community, for which the US, Canada, and Japan could provide a nucleus of developed states and around which other states of the area could usefully be grouped, if they wish.

10. Where participation by ourselves or other industrialized nations in these regional groupings is acceptable to the other members, this will help to weave a still tighter web of free world ties. But we should not press. If other free states wish to consider matters of mutual concern without outsiders present, their grouping, if constructive, will still help build the community of free nations.

11. The UN is the most important forum in which closer political ties between developed and less developed free nations are to be sought. It is the only forum in which we and all these less developed nations come continuously together and work toward common goals. It is a continuing means of educating the emerging nations about the facts of international life. It creates international institutions, e.g., the FAO and WHO—which also tend to strengthen the community of free nations.

The UN can thus make a continuing and powerful—if not decisive—contribution to the growth of the community of free nations.

To this end, we should seek to extend the scope and enhance the effectiveness of its activities. We should continue to give vigorous support to the development of its executive function, i.e., the concept of a single and effective Secretary General and the independence of the UN Secretariat.

We should try to persuade the less developed countries that it is in their interest to do the same. The UN is now dependent for its continued effectiveness on these countries’ support. Persistent Soviet efforts to hobble the UN can only be frustrated with that support.

It will help to convince these countries that effective UN activities advance their welfare and help them to guard against great power domination if UN activities of direct benefit to them—e.g., UN aid to African education, UN food surplus disposal, UN peace-keeping machinery, and UN activities attendant on the International Development Decade can be pressed forward vigorously. We should seek to do just this.

We should also make a major effort to consult and concert intimately at the UN with the less developed countries about measures that we are taking outside the UN to build a community of free nations. To facilitate this intercourse, we should avoid exclusive or preclusive ties with the Atlantic nations in UN voting or debate. We should try to persuade our European allies that the broad purposes they and we are pursuing jointly in the world will best be advanced by a US posture which thus seeks to attract new nations into the emerging community of free nations—even if it ruffles some European feelings in the process.

12. There is another worldwide forum worth commending. The Commonwealth is a useful and effective tie between some developed members of the free world community and a wide variety of emerging nations in Asia and Africa. It can probably do more to bring some of these diverse and widely separated nations together than any other instrument now available in the free world. We should encourage its continued effectiveness in every way consistent with our support for European integration. We should take care not to urge newly independent members of the Commonwealth to substitute close relations with the US for their Commonwealth ties.

13. The French Community is not yet in the same league but it holds promise. We should act in ways which would help it to fulfill that promise, so long as it seems to rest on a solid base of support among its less developed members.

14. A wide variety of private worldwide forums can also be helpful. It is worth remembering that the community we know best, the United States, is held together not only by constitutional ties between the fifty states but also by a complex network of non-political ties between private groups in each of these states. We should seek to encourage and bring about similar ties between the wide variety of business, labor, professional, fraternal, philanthropic, and civic organizations that span the free world. The great world religious can serve to bind the community of free nations closer together; they have much in common, and stand out in sharp contrast with the atheistic principles of Communism.

Our ultimate hope is to create, in all these ways, a multilateral framework of world contacts so complex and so strong that it can truly be termed a world community.

15. The success of this US policy will require, however, that the other free nations come to understand and share our goal of creating a community of free nations. The US public posture toward the outside world should be designed to help create that understanding.

US leaders—in their addresses at home and in the UN—should lay out that goal, describe its content and advantage, and make clear how the manifold aspects of US policy are related to its attainment.

Our public information programs should do the same. They should indicate how our effort to build a community of free nations helps to assure the freedom, security and progress of other countries. The US can only prosecute its worldwide policy effectively if “it is so directed,” as Sir Eyre Crowe well said of Britain’s policy before World War I, “as to harmonize with the general desires and ideals common to all mankind and, more particularly, that it is closely identified with the primary and vital interests of a majority, or as many as possible, of the other nations.”

In fact, this identity exists. In trying to build a pluralistic community of free nations, we have a long-term goal which coincides with the interests and aspirations of other peoples. As our public statements and information programs bring this fact home to them, the broad consensus which is the indispensable foundation of that community will tend to be created.

PART FOUR

RELATIONS WITH THE COMMUNIST NATIONS

1. Our political posture toward the Communist nations should be geared to our basic purpose: the building of a community of free nations.

2. This posture should, therefore, keep the main focus of free world attention where it belongs: on opportunities in the free world, rather than on the need for reacting to Communist propaganda and diplomatic initiatives. It should keep free world relations with the Communists in perspective as one element of our concerted effort to build and defend a free world system. And it should encourage evolution in the Communist nations which might eventually permit them to be absorbed into that system.

3. The following sections discuss the implications of these broad purposes for our relations with (i) the USSR; (ii) the satellites; (iii) Communist China, (iv) Communist ideology.

I. The USSR

4. The best way to avoid an excessive preoccupation with periodic crises in our relations with the USSR is obviously to avoid the crises.

One step to this end is to build up the military strength to deter them. This has been discussed.

Another step is to address situations within the free world which could lead to crises. For example: the conflict in Angola might, if not alleviated, eventually become the focus of Bloc intervention (as in the case of the Congo) and thus erupt into a full-blown crisis which would engage our resources and prestige. US policy should make a deliberate effort to identify such possible crisis situations and to resolve them before the Communist nations can exploit them.

It will also be desirable to reduce the number of East-West friction points which contribute to crises, where this can be done without prejudice to our national objectives. We should periodically review US positions in international organizations (e.g., ostracism of Hungary) and Western intelligence and propaganda operations from this standpoint.

The most useful way to avoid crises will be to convey a clear understanding of our intentions to the Soviets. We should cultivate a maximum of informal communication with them to this end. We should discuss fully our policy toward the areas and situations in which crises could erupt, so that they will not mis-read this policy as being weak or provocative.

In the long run we might try to work toward tacit understandings as to the ground rules governing our competition with the USSR, if only by making clear the ways in which we are likely to respond to different types of Communist actions. We should bring out the need for both our countries to exercise restraint in the use of their power in weak and unstable less developed areas, in order to keep that competition within manageable bounds. We should try to identify other areas, e.g., inflammatory propaganda, in which mutual restraint might be desirable.

5. When crises do erupt, our purpose in them should be clear and simple: to restore equilibrium as quickly and with as little violence as possible, and without a net loss for our interests. We should avoid either:

(a) trying to resolve the crises by concessions which would encourage the Communists to believe that crisis mongering is a profitable occupation;

(b) being moved either by rising tensions or by the importunities of our allies or our own public to prolong and extend the crisis in an effort to inflict a dramatic humiliation on the Communists.

6. We should also ensure that crises, when they erupt, do not wholly dominate US policy. These crises would be rewarding for the Communists if they thus decisively diverted our attention and energies from long-term endeavors.

We should also beware of reacting to crises in ways which would jeopardize those constructive endeavors. The recurring temptation to take actions to meet immediate threats which would change the direction of our long-term policies will need to be resisted, if the basic strategy outlined in this paper is to be carried forward.

7. All of this will clearly require vigorous US leadership in shaping Western public opinion during crises. We should make clear to our own and allied peoples the need for both firmness and restraint. We should resist any pressures for a military show-down or a diplomatic “triumph.” We should define our basic purpose—prevention of forceful change—and indicate how this relates to our over-all strategy of seeking peaceful change in the building of a community of free nations. This will be the easier to do if we have publicly and convincingly rehearsed that strategy before the crisis.

8. It is equally important to avoid being diverted by either false detente or an excessive preoccupation with East-West negotiations.

The best way to avoid the paralysing effects of false detente is to indoctrinate our own and allied peoples in the basic facts of the East-West struggle. We should make clear that this struggle arises out of the nature of the Soviet and Chinese Communist systems. While avoiding making ideology a casus belli, even in the propaganda field, we should be wholly clear as to the underlying conflict between ourselves and the Communists, and the fact that it is likely to continue for a very long time.

The best way to avoid the excessive preoccupation with East-West negotiations which periodically seems to sweep over the West is: (i) to avoid over-dramatizing either the likelihood of negotiations’ success or the consequences of their failure, and (ii) to resist pressures for inflating the level of negotiation beyond what is substantively useful.

It will be helpful to this end if we can avoid formal Summit meetings, except where needed business cannot otherwise be transacted. One such case may be where the full authority of the heads of government is needed to halt a chain of military action and counter-action leading straight to war. This is not to say that it would not be useful to develop further informal contacts and exchanges between the President and the Soviet leadership.

It will also be helpful if we can maintain a posture in negotiations which suggests that they are a businesslike attempt to reduce the risk of war, and do not reflect any basic change in US or Soviet attitudes toward each other. We should stay clear of meaningless camaraderie.

9. Our long-term purpose is to increase the chances of constructive evolution in the USSR, which might eventually move it to participate in the community of free nations.

Change is the law of life, and there will surely be internal change of some kind within Soviet society over time. This is not to say that the change will necessarily be of the kind which we would prefer, or will have any early useful effect on the USSR’s external posture. But there is obviously some possibility of this, and that is enough justification for US measures designed to reinforce any civilizing pressures which may be at work.

(a) We should maintain continuing pressure on the USSR to expand exchanges of persons on equitable terms and to reduce restrictions on the flow of information. It may be somewhat difficult for Soviet leaders, like the Japanese Shoguns, to maintain a stable repressive system in the face of widening exposure to outside influence.

(b) We should press for cooperative ventures in such fields as outer space, Antarctica, public health, and peaceful uses of atomic energy. Such ventures might give the Soviets somewhat more of a vested interest in respectability and perhaps even induce some of their officials to think—albeit on a very small scale—in terms of business-like dealings with the West on matters of mutual advantage.

(c) To the extent possible in the existing climate, we should grant to the USSR the position its status as a great power warrants. We should also hold out, by word and deed, the prospect of fuller Soviet participation and influence in the community of free nations if and as the Soviet leaders show a genuine interest and will for such constructive participation. This will not change the basic policy of Soviet leaders now in power, but it may have some moderating effects on their conduct, or that of their successors. It may also make it that much more difficult for the Soviet leadership to persuade its people that any change in the Soviet external posture is precluded by relentless Western hostility.

None of this may do any good. Clearly we do not have such a good chance of success through such efforts that we can relax our efforts in other directions. We cannot expect Soviet society, which is also Russian society, to lose quickly the hostile and dangerous features that stem from the Communist philosophy and Russian environment. But our effort to build a community of free nations would be incomplete if it did not include some efforts toward this long-term goal.

II. The Satellites

10. We want the nations of Eastern Europe eventually to become members of the community of free nations. This will hinge largely on an evolution in Soviet policy, which we should seek to encourage—through means that have been outlined. It will also hinge on changes within the satellites themselves; the rest of this Section discusses means of promoting these changes.

11. We should try to widen contacts between the nations of Eastern Europe and the West at every level. Such contacts will bring home in some way, however muted, the message of freedom. That message may encourage these peoples to press their governments, insofar as they safely can, for gradual internal liberalization and for steps toward greater national independence.

12. Western contacts with the satellites will generally depend on the consent of their governments. That consent will hinge, in part, on the nature and apparent intent of the contacts which are being proposed.

These contacts should not, therefore, appear to reflect an intent to create early political changes in Eastern Europe. We should play “liberation” in low key, in order to achieve the wider East-West relations that are likely to promote gradual progress toward this eventual goal.

When occasions arise on which our silence might be misinterpreted, however, we should make clear that the community of free nations is intended, in the long run, to include the peoples of Eastern Europe.

13. Western Europe has a special role to play in all of this. As European integration and economic progress proceeds, its pull and attraction will increasingly be felt in Eastern Europe. We should encourage and assist the Western European nations to exploit any resulting tendency toward closer relations between the two parts of a once united continent.

14. Poland and Yugoslavia offer special opportunities. It is in our interest that Poland maintain some freedom from Soviet control, and that Yugoslavia preserve its present relative independence. We should be prepared to furnish economic aid to this end, and we should encourage Western European nations—perhaps acting through the European Community—to do the same.

15. Albania is a special case. It is in our interest that the break between Albania and the USSR continue. Ultimately, we should hope that Albania would return to the community of free nations. For the time being, however, our interests would be best served by Albania’s remaining a bone of contention between Communist China and the USSR.

16. East Germany is a problem of particular moment.

To indicate that we regard the division of Germany as permanent would be to shake West German confidence in the West and thus perhaps jeopardize effective German participation in the European and Atlantic Communities. On the other hand, it will probably not be possible to insulate ourselves from dealings with the East German regime over the long term.

We should be prepared to do business with the East German regime, as the need arises, on a technical level—much as the West Germans do. We should not grant diplomatic recognition. We should continue to make clear our dedication to German unity and our expectation that it will prevail. But with the passage of time our East German policy should tend to converge with our general European satellite policy.

17. If revolts break out in East Germany or any other satellite, we should bear in mind the defensive goal laid out for our military policy in Part Three of this paper. Our grand design is to build a community of free nations which will expand by its attractive power; we do not wish to jeopardize this design by allowing Eastern Europe to become a battlefield between ourselves and the USSR, unless we are attacked. We should maintain this posture if turbulence erupts in this area, and urge our allies to do the same.

III. Communist China

18. The chances of promoting a helpful evolution of the Chinese Communist state and its policies through increased contacts and diplomatic dealings appear remote indeed. US efforts to achieve them at this time would invite the rebuffs of the Peiping regime and could lead to harmful misunderstanding of US policy among our friends in Asia.

19. However we do need, as part of our effort to build a community of free nations, to strike a posture towards Communist China which will place the onus for continued hostility squarely on Peiping and thus enhance free world confidence in US leadership and gain firmer support for policies designed to counter Chinese Communist expansion.

By thus holding ajar the door to a better relationship between Communist China and ourselves, we can avoid serving the Peiping regime’s interest in convincing the Chinese people that the US is their implacable enemy. Our doing so might also contribute to the emergence of more moderate policies if a deepening of Communist China’s difficulties in feeding its populace and building the industrial base for world power should result in a leadership split.

20. Since the present Chinese Communist leadership has a vested interest in having the US appear to the world at large and to its own populace as implacably hostile, we cannot expect it to cooperate with US efforts toward the ends outlined above. That being so, we must place primary reliance on US actions which are unilateral, in the sense of not necessarily requiring a ChiCom response. For example:

(a) Avoiding apparently unnecessary provocations.

(b) Pursuing negotiations with Communist China on specific matters of mutual concern, as needed.

(c) [illegible in the original] to develop a course regarding the UN membership question which would make Communist China’s non-inclusion appear to be the result of Peiping’s unwillingness to accept specified conditions, rather than US intransigeance.

21. The same general purpose of gaining support for a policy in an area where it is unilateral in a dangerous degree, and thus enhancing acceptance of US leadership, will be served by measures which make the position of the US on Taiwan more acceptable to majority free world opinion.

(a) We should use our influence and aid as a means not only of protecting Taiwan through our alliance with the GRC, but also of progressively promoting the timely emergence there of government based on popular consent.

(b) We should work, within the limits which a useful relation with the GRC will allow, for a damping-down of the GRC-Chinese Communist civil war. As a first step, we should consider seeking a major reduction in the garrisons on the offshore islands—on purely military grounds.

(c) We should, at the same time, make plain to the GRC our enduring commitment to sustain and defend a free Chinese government on Taiwan. We should outline our view as to the role such a government can play as an attractive counter to the Chinese Communist regime over the long term.

22. These measures may enhance free world cohesion, but it is unlikely that they will prevent Communist China from continuing to grow in power and from eventually acquiring a nuclear capability.

This growth of Chinese Communist power might be slowed if the Sino-Soviet split widened. There is little we can do to promote that split, but we should at least avoid actions which might have the effect of healing it. We should not go out of our way to make it look as though Khrushchev’s preference for negotiation over fighting is a vain one; and we should make clear that the contrary Chinese view, if put to the test, is likely to entail swift disaster. We should try to avoid giving the Chinese Communists a more effective basis than they now have for seeking Soviet nuclear aid, e.g., by US provision of offensive nuclear delivery systems to Communist China’s neighbors or by basing such systems in areas close to mainland China before they are needed to counter a Chinese Communist nuclear capability in being.

We should not, however, become so fascinated with the Sino-Soviet split as to lose sight of the larger prospect. That both states will continue to wax in strength, without waning in hostility toward us. The only effective means of offsetting this prospect will be a continuing build-up of free world strength and cohesion, through our own constructive policies.

IV. Communist Ideology

23. We should not be diverted from these positive policies by an excessive preoccupation with psychological warfare. Our best response to the Communists’ ideological offensive will be to get on with the building of a community of free nations and to make clear that our policies to this end are compatible with the wish of people everywhere to live, to develop, to do things in their own way—and not in accord with a superimposed pattern.

24. In elaborating this goal and concept, we should seek to undermine the appeal of Communist ideology—in both the free world and the Bloc.

We should oppose the Communist thesis that the nations of the world now find themselves, and will continue to find themselves, in either one of three blocs—Communist, capitalist, and neutral—the thesis that the nations are divided only between those that want to be free and those that would destroy that freedom.

We should meet the Communist contention that unrelenting hostility and conflict are a law of history with the contention that international peace and cooperation would actually exist but for the policies by which the Communist-ruled states exclude themselves from the world community.

We should expose the Communist concept that “peaceful coexistence” is a form of struggle between nations, and substitute the concept that honest coexistence is a framework for genuine cooperation for constructive purposes.

We should not lend the Communists prestige by echoing their talk about a “world Communist movement.” We should speak less of “international communism” and more of the national power complexes behind it. We should stress that the only genuine international movement, in the true sense of that term, is the movement to build a community of free nations.

In all these ways, we should seek to expose to the light of reason the confused thinking on which Communist ideology feeds and to refute the accuracy of Communist claims.

We should, in all that we do or say, accept as hard reality that the problem we face is not one of articulating words and phrases, or even concepts. We best refute the Communists’ ideological claim to be the “wave of the future” by denying them further successes in the present and by working toward ever greater free world successes for the future.

Thus the conclusion of this paper reaffirms its beginning, by stressing that the only effective long-term response to the Communist challenge is to press ahead with efforts to build and defend a community of free nations.

1. Conveys draft “Basic National Security Policy” paper. Printed in part in the print volume as Document 62. Secret. 85 pp. Department of State, S/S–NSC (Miscellaneous) Files: Lot 66 D 95, BNSP 1961–1962.