USUN files, “Dependent Areas (DA), 1952–1957”
Memorandum by the Director of the Office of the Dependent Area Affairs ( Gerig )1
Memorandum on U.S. Policy Towards Colonial Areas and Colonial Powers
The attached paper on U.S. colonial policy by Ridgeway Knight 2 seems to me to give a well-reasoned and lucid interpretation of the policy which we have perforce been following. We have for a long time been trying to balance long-term objectives in the colonial field with short-term requirements.
In actual practice, however, our problems arise when we have to apply this principle to particular cases in the United Nations Committees dealing with colonial questions. It is like we have so often found in our colonial talks with the British and French—we agree in general but differ in particular cases.3
There is also the question as to whether the immediate and short-term interests of the free world are best served by supporting our West European allies in particular issues which alienate other large segments of the free world, in particular the Moslem world. Every aspect of the colonial question, large or small, wherever it arises in any Committee of the United Nations, compels us to take a decision which throws our weight either on one side or the other. And we must realize, I think, more clearly, that some innocent-looking questions which might on the surface be regarded as minor in their implications, do have far-reaching effects.
Nevertheless, I think the memorandum of Knight and Nunley is on the whole very helpful and ought to contribute to clearer thinking in the Department on the colonial question generally.
A more detailed reaction to the memorandum is being prepared in UND.4
- Addressed to Assistant Secretary Hickerson and the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for UN Affairs (Sandifer).↩
- Dated Apr. 21, 1952, p. 1102.↩
- For talks with the British and French (separately) on colonial questions in 1950 and 1951, see Foreign Relations, 1950, vol. ii, p. 434 ff. and ibid., 1951, vol. ii, pp. 623 ff.↩
- Infra.↩