224. Telegram From Secretary of State Rusk to the Department of State1
13023. Secto 35. Eyes only for the President and the Acting Secretary. There was no major surprise in my brief visit in Taipei. It was clear that spirits had been greatly boosted by the good vote in the United Nations. I encountered no complaints or recriminations from any officials, including President Chiang, about our handling of the matters or about our vote for the Italian resolution.
Before my arrival the South Vietnamese had put in some requests for additional assistance from the Republic of China and I found a generally sympathetic attitude on the part of officials in Taipei. It seems to me that this is now a matter of expediting specific arrangements and getting Chinese technical personnel in position to go to work.
President Chiang spoke at considerable length about the mainland, details of which will be furnished through memorandum of conversation. He expressed concern to see the problem of Taipei become involved in the problem of Viet-Nam. Apparently, he had in mind the possibility that if the two were intermingled, concessions would be made to Peking with respect to Taipei in exchange for peace in Viet-Nam. This led him to indicate that it would be a mistake for Chinese combat troops to be in Viet-Nam but I was not completely clear that he might not have been fishing for a request for such troops from me.
More interestingly, he developed at some length the thesis that he, his government and his armed forces are considered by Peking to be their no. 1 enemy. He said that in the “past few days” he had become concerned about the possibility that Peking would launch a nuclear strike on [Page 490] Formosa with “ten or twelve weapons” and reduce that island to ashes. He said that Peking would probably feel that the Americans might not retaliate because world opinion would consider that Peking has a perfect right to bomb a part of its own territory but that, in any event, Peking would expect to survive any such retaliation and its main enemy on Formosa would be gone. I told him that I would not wish to comment offhand on such a serious and far-reaching matter, that I did not believe the contingency he had in mind would in fact occur although no one can guarantee what the future might hold, that such developments seemed to me to lie in the realm of the insane and irrational, but that the U.S. considered its Mutual Security Treaty with the Republic of China fully in effect. I did not draw him out on what conclusions he drew from his fears because I rather thought that he would immediately recommend a first strike against mainland Chinese nuclear installations.
President Chiang rather expects that Mao Tse-tung and Lin Piao will establish their full control on the mainland and will follow a militant policy dangerous to all of us.
I was once again tremendously impressed with the performance of the Republic of China on Formosa and I am bringing back some quite exciting material about their technical assistance to other countries which will be useful for Congressional briefings as a good sample of how a successful aid program can multiply itself in many directions.
- Source: Department of State, Central Files, ORG 7 S. Secret; Immediate; Nodis. The source text does not indicate the time of transmission; the telegram was received at 2:09 a.m. Passed to the White House. Rusk was in Taipei December 7–9. Memoranda of his conversations with Chiang Kai-shek, Chiang Ching-kuo, Foreign Minister Wei, Vice President Yen, and Economic Minister K.T. Li are ibid., Conference Files: Lot 67 D 586, CF 103.↩