860H.00/10–2249: Telegram
The Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs (Perkins) to the Secretary of State
4424. For the Secretary, Under Secretary and Counselor from Perkins. At Paris meeting of Douglas, Bruce, Dunn, Kirk, Harriman [Page 974] and McCloy1 there was unanimous agreement that Tito’s heresy and conflict with the Kremlin is deeply significant and represents an effective area for positive action in the cold war. This group believes that Tito’s defection has created a wide and deep schism within the Communist world and represents a challenge to Moscow’s control of the world Communist movement, the instrument of Russian expansion. By raising the basic issue of nationalism Tito has also challenged the Kremlin’s control and discipline within the Communist apparatus and hence has set back the USSR’s initiative against the west.
The Paris group feels that an essential element of US policy should be to keep Tito afloat as the inspiration of these devisive forces within the Communist world. The US and western European countries should continue to provide timely but unostentatious economic and financial support to enable Tito to survive the Cominform drive to liquidate him and such aid must be neither too little nor too late. Should the Cominform attack against Tito take the form of large scale guerrilla operations from inside of Yugoslavia and supported by the Soviet Union and the satellites, the west should be prepared, if and when Tito requests it, to replenish his military stocks. It is accordingly recommended that a study be immediately undertaken in Washington with a view to determining what military supplies could most expeditiously be furnished to Tito by the west.
In our public relations handling of assistance to Yugoslavia, Tito’s regime should not be presented tamer than what it is, i.e. a Communist, police-state dictatorship.
Sent Department 4424; pouched London for Douglas, Frankfort for McCloy, Rome for Dunn, Moscow for Kirk, Belgrade for Cannon.
- A meeting of principal United States Ambassadors in Europe was held in Paris, October 21–22, 1949, under the chairmanship of Assistant Secretary of State Perkins. The discussions centered on German problems, questions of Western European cooperation in the military, political, and economic fields, and progress and setbacks in the cold war including the Yugoslav-Cominform controversy and East-West trade. For documentation on the meeting, see vol. iv, pp. 469 ff. The views set forth in this telegram were subsequently reaffirmed by the London Conference of U.S. Chiefs of Mission to the satellite states, October 24–26, 1949; see the Conclusions and Recommendations of that conference, p. 28.↩