694.001/3–3150
Memorandum by the Special Assistant to the Secretary (Howard) to the Minister in France (Bohlen)
For your background information in considering the proposal in the attached paper,1 I would like to give a brief résumé of what has transpired since last September when Mr. Bevin proposed to the Secretary that it might be necessary to proceed without the USSR in order to have a Japanese peace treaty and suggested that U.S. forces remain in Japan in the post-treaty period pursuant to a bilateral base agreement between the United States and Japan.
The Secretary, at the approval of the President, asked the Defense Department for a statement of what the U.S. military requirements would be in the event that a peace treaty and bilateral base agreement with Japan were to be negotiated. Instead of a direct response to this request Under Secretary of the Army Voorhees became involved for a considerable period of time with the study of the legal problems involved in the termination of the occupation without Soviet participation. Eventually in late December the JCS gave their reply that they still regarded a peace treaty as premature. The essence of the JCS opinion is that a peace treaty is premature because of two mutually exclusive military requirements: (1) the requirement of U.S. security that U.S. forces continue to be based on Japan for an indefinite period and (2) the requirement that any peace treaty must be signed also by the USSR and the de facto government of China. The Secretary met briefly with the JCS after receiving their reply and gave as his offhand reaction that in view of the mutually exclusive character of these requirements during the indefinite future the JCS opinion would appear to be of a long-term character and their conclusion that the peace treaty is premature was a masterpiece of understatement.
In conjunction with the JCS opinion—and illuminating some of the thinking underlying it—Tracy Voorhees proposed to the Secretary and subsequently to General MacArthur the adoption of a “standby SCAP” arrangement. That is, there would be no peace treaty because of the security risks involved in proceeding without the USSR but the conditions of a peace would be approximated by the unilateral action [Page 1158] of SCAP in ceasing to exercise his day-to-day detailed controls over the Japanese Government, while maintaining his reserve powers for use in the event of an emergency arising from a Soviet attack, a communist uprising, or otherwise. The central legal problem which preoccupied Voorhees and the JCS appeared to be that on conclusion of a separate peace treaty the USSR would then be free, and with plausibility, to act as if Japan had violated its surrender terms in permiting U.S. forces to remain in Japan contrary to the Potsdam Declaration and would engage in harassing activities against Japanese shipping, etc., and might even declare that hostilities with Japan were restored. Considerable point was made of the security risk to U.S. troops in Japan under these circumstances which they regarded as analogous to our lack of complete legal rights to access to Berlin which they say brought about the Berlin blockade and airlift. The Secretary’s reaction was that Soviet moves would be prompted not by such legal considerations but rather by the political and power relationships between the USSR and the United States.
While awaiting receipt of the JCS reply we had been exploring the relationship of a bilateral base agreement to a peace treaty, the content of the two and the political consequences in Japan, the Far East and elsewhere of such a U.S.-Japanese base agreement. The principal disadvantages of a base agreement were that: because of the uncertainties in the situation it was necessary for the U.S. military to maximize its military requirements in such an agreement; the nakedly military U.S. posture in Japan might have adverse political consequences among the peoples of Japan and the Far East; the Japanese Government would be subjected to an all-out Soviet-Communist propaganda campaign of having sold out the Japanese people to U.S. imperialism; and complete termination of SCAP controls might increase Soviet and Chinese Communist capabilities of increasing their influence over Japan.
With these difficulties in mind we developed an alternative approach. On the assumption that it was not feasible at the present time to work out a satisfactory solution of the security problem but that it was feasible to solve most of the political and economic problems generally dealt with in a peace treaty, we worked out a so-called agreement for the restoration of normal political and economic relations with Japan which would restore Japan to a state of peace and permit its re-entry into the family of nations but would retain the wartime legal agreements as authority for the continued activities of SCAP in security matters (the rationale being that the long term and very general security objectives of the Potsdam Declaration had by no means been achieved as yet). This proposal was discussed with the Secretary whose reaction was that it overstressed the importance of the legal problems involved and would appear to involve a change in the regime of control [Page 1159] and would therefore be subject to the Soviet charge that the wartime agreements were being violated. It was also felt that, although this compromise approach might provide a second line of defense, to make it our initial proposal would arouse the suspicions of our allies that we intended to remain in Japan indefinitely under the occupation.
Accordingly, a new approach was taken with the following objective: On the one hand to conclude a “normal” type of peace treaty dealing with economic and political problems, and security problems insofar as they related to the possible resurgence of Japanese aggression, and on the other hand to develop that type of security arrangement in relation to possible Soviet-Communist aggression which would appear most satisfactory from the standpoint of U.S. security in relation to Japan. This approach opened for the first time the possibility of a Pacific pact which had been previously regarded as contrary to U.S. policy. The type of pact which had the greatest appeal was an “off shore” Pacific pact which did not involve U.S. military commitments with respect to the Asian mainland. Such a pact was briefly discussed with the Secretary, who thought there were possibilities along these lines and he asked that the matter be further developed and a memorandum be prepared for submission to the NSC. The attached memorandum is a statement of the Department’s position concerning such an offshore Pacific pact. (As a matter of tactics a much briefer version of this memorandum would be submitted to the NSC for its approval.)
The attached proposal has by no means been fully cleared in the Department. The primary objections which have been raised against the pact involve the adverse effect of exclusion of the UK and France upon our general relations with those countries—for this reason it appears that it would probably be necessary to include the UK and France in some way; the difficulty in leaving the Near East as the one major non-Communist area of the world not covered by such a pact; and the adverse psychological consequences in the countries of South East Asia of their exclusion from the U.S. security commitments under the arrangement—for this reason it is universally agreed that the problem of French Indo-China would have to be taken care of separately and in advance of the conclusion of any Pacific pact.
I am also attaching a brief memorandum2 suggesting a refinement of the Pacific pact proposal to help meet some of the above objections. It does not appear that this proposal does adequately satisfy the above three objections however. Tommy Thompson3 has suggested for example that the character of the commitment in such a pact should be first, to defend Japan against attack and second to defend one another [Page 1160] against attack by Japan, with the scope of membership including Korea and the South East Asian countries. Although this alternative is being explored it does not offhand appear to be very desirable from the standpoint of the Japanese who would regard the purpose of bases as being to keep Japan down during the indefinite post-treaty period. It is also possible that the U.S. military would not be prepared to extend U.S. commitments on to the Asian mainland even in the limited form suggested. However, these points are being explored.
The latest proposal of the Defense Department is almost identical with our economic-political agreement referred to above (p. 2, second full paragraph).4