794A.00/8–2650: Circular telegram

The Secretary of State to Certain Diplomatic Offices 1

secret

Expect considerable press reporting comment and speculation re reported msg Gen MacArthur to Vet. For. Wars Chicago Convention Aug 28 dealing Far East policy Formosa in particular.

President’s statement of June 27, his msg to Congress of July 19 and Amb Austin’s letter of Aug 25 to SC are only authoritative statements on US policy respect Formosa. They continue to represent our policy. There have been no changes.

For urinfo only pertinent sections purported MacArthur msg as distributed advance text to press fol:

“In view of misconceptions currently being voiced concerning the relationship of Formosa to our strategic potential in the Pacific, I believe it in the public interest to avail myself of this opportunity to state my views thereon to you, all of whom having fought overseas understand broad strategic concepts. To begin with, any appraisal of that strategic potential requires an appreciation of the changes wrought in the course of the past war. Prior thereto the Western strategic frontier of the US lay on the littoral line of the Americas with an exposed island salient extending out through Hawaii, Midway and Guam to the Philippines. That salient was not an outpost of strength but an avenue of weakness along which the enemy could and did attack us. The Pacific was a potential area of advancement for any predatory force intent upon striking at the bordering land areas.

All of this was changed by our Pacific victory. Our strategic frontier then shifted to embrace the entire Pacific Ocean which has become a vast moat to protect us as long as we hold it. Indeed, it acts as a protective shield to all of the Americas and all free lands of the Pacific Ocean area we control to the shores of Asia by a chain of islands extending in an arc from the Aleutians to the Marianas held by us and our free Allies. From this island chain we can dominate with air power every Asiatic port from Vladivostok to Singapore and prevent any hostile movement into the Pacific. Any predatory attack from Asia must be an amphibious effort. No amphibious force can be successful with our control of the sealanes and the air over these lanes in its [Page 452] avenue of advance. With Naval and air supremacy and modern ground elements to defend bases, any major attack from continental Asia toward us or our friends of the Pacific would come to failure. Under such conditions the Pacific no longer represents menacing avenues of approach for a prospective invader—it assumes instead the friendly aspect of a peaceful lake. Our line of defense is a natural one and can be maintained with a minimum of military effort and expense. It envisions no attack against anyone nor does it provide the bastions essential for offensive operations, but properly maintained wld be an invincible defense against aggression. If we hold this line we may have peace—lose it and war is inevitable.

The geographic location of Formosa is such that in the hand of a power unfriendly to the US it constitutes an enemy salient in the very center of this defensive perimeter, 100 to 150 miles closer to the adjacent friendly segments—Okinawa and the Philippines—than any point in continental Asia. At the present time there is on Formosa a concentration of operational air and naval bases which is potentially greater than any similar concentration of the Asiatic mainland between the Yellow Sea and Strait of Malacca. Additional bases can be developed in a relatively short time by an aggressive exploitation of all World War II Japanese facilities. An enemy force utilizing those installations currently available could increase by 100 percent the air effort which cld be directed against Okinawa as compared to operations based on the mainland and at the same time cld direct damaging air attacks with fighter type aircraft against friendly installations in the Philippines which are currently beyond the range of fighters based on the mainland. Our air supremacy at once wld become doubtful.

As a result of its geographic location and base potential, utilization of Formosa by a mil power hostile to the US may either counterbalance or overshadow the strategic importance of the central and southern flank of the US front line position. Formosa in the hands of such an hostile power cld be compared to an unsinkable aircraft carrier and submarine tender ideally located to accomplish offensive strategy and at the same time checkmate defensive or counter-offensive operations by friendly forces based on Okinawa and the Philippines. This unsinkable carrier-tender has the capacity to operate from 10 to 20 air groups of types ranging from jet fighters to B–29 type bombers as well as to provide forward operating facilities for short-range coastal submarines. In acquiring this forward submarine base, the efficacy of the short range submarine wld be so enormously increased by the additional radius of activity as to threaten completely sea traffic from the south and interdict all sea lanes in the Western Pacific. Submarine blockade by the enemy with all its destructive ramifications wld thereby become a virtual certainty.

Shld Formosa fall and bases thereafter come into the hands of a potential enemy of the US, the latter will have acquired an additional ‘fleet’ which will have been obtained and can be maintained at an incomparably lower cost than cld its equivalent in aircraft carriers and submarine tenders. Current estimates of air and submarine resources in the FE indicate the capability of such a potential enemy to extend his forces southward and still maintain an imposing degree of mil strength for employment elsewhere in the Pacific area.

Historically, Formosa has been used as a springboard for just such mil aggression directed against areas to the south. The most notable [Page 453] and recent example was the utilization of it by the Japanese in World War II. At the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941, it played an important part as a staging area and supporting base for the various Jap invasion convoys. The supporting air forces of Japan’s Army and Navy were based on fields situated along southern Formosa. From 1942 through 1944 Formosa was a vital link in the transportation and communication chain which stretched from Japan through Okinawa and the Philippines to Southeast Asia. As the US carrier forces advanced into the Western Pacific, the bases on Formosa assumed an increasingly greater role in the Jap defense scheme. Shld Formosa fall into the hands of an hostile power, history wld repeat itself. Its mil potential wld again be fully exploited as the means to breach and neutralize our western Pacific defense system and mount a war of conquest against the free nations of the Pacific basin.

Nothing could be more fallacious than the threadbare argument by those who advocate appeasement and defeatism in the Pacific that if we defend Formosa we alienate continental Asia. Those who speak thus do not understand the Orient. They do not grant that it is in the pattern of the Oriental psychology to respect and follow aggressive, resolute and dynamic leadership—to quickly turn on a leadership characterized by timidity or vacillation—and they underestimate the oriental mentality. Nothing in the last five years has so inspired the Far East as the American determination to preserve the bulwarks of our Pacific Ocean strategic position from future encroachment, for few of its peoples fail accurately to appraise the safeguard such determination brings to their free institutions. To pursue any other course would be to turn over the fruits of our Pacific victory to a potential enemy. It would shift any future battle area five thousand miles eastward to the coasts of the American continents, our own home coast; it would completely expose our friends in the Philippines, our friends in Australia and New Zealand, our friends in Indonesia, our friends in Japan, and other areas, to the lustful thrusts of those who stand for slavery as against liberty, for atheism as against God.

The decision of President Truman on June 27 lighted into flame a lamp of hope throughout Asia that was burning dimly toward extinction. It marked for the Far East the focal and turning point in this area’s struggle for freedom. It swept aside in one great monumental stroke all of the hypocrisy and the sophistry which has confused and deluded so many people distant from the actual scene.”

Acheson
  1. This message was sent to the Embassies in Canberra, London, New Delhi, Ottawa, Paris, and Taipei, and to the United States Mission at the United Nations in New York.