314. Memorandum From the Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for National Estimates (Kent) to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (Harriman)0

SUBJECT

  • What the Soviets Must be Thinking as They Perceive the Chinese Communists Working Towards an Initial Advanced Weapons Capability—Nuclear Weapons and Missiles
1.
I have long felt that the Soviet leaders must harbor the profoundest apprehension of the Chinese attainment of an early nuclear capability.
2.
The Soviets must appreciate that, upon the attainment of a primitive capability, the Chinese will require perhaps decades before this could be expanded to a meaningful deterrent of the US. The Soviets must also realize that when the Chinese have such a capability, it might be directed westward against the USSR as well as eastward against the US.
3.
Worrisome as the prospect of the achievement of this capability may be, its attainment is obviously a long way off. But the period [Page 772] between the moment of an initial operational capability with crude weapons and delivery systems, and this later time, should cause the Soviets almost equal alarm. For during this period they will perceive that the Chinese are possessed of the means of starting a nuclear war in the Far East which they cannot finish.
4.
Should the Chinese be so misguided as to attack Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, or Southeast Asia, and thus throw down the nuclear gage to the US, Soviet leaders must see themselves facing up to a most trying decision: whether to stand by and see China as a base for the Far Eastern Communist movement knocked into a cocked hat, or whether to come to China’s defense, thus finding themselves in a nuclear war with the US for reasons not of their own choosing.
Sherman Kent
  1. Source: Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Harriman Papers, Test Ban I, Background. Secret.