795.00/9–1251
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs (Merchant)
Subject: Various Far Eastern Problems
| Participants: | Mr. R. H. Scott, Assistant Under Secretary, British Foreign Office |
| Mr. Tomlinson, Counselor, British Embassy | |
| Mr. Livingston T. Merchant, Acting Assistant Secretary for Far Eastern Affairs |
Mr. Scott and Mr. Tomlinson called on me this morning and they [Page 904] spent more than an hour going over various Far Eastern problems in general terms.
At the outset, I said that there was one point made by the Secretary in his discussion of possible future courses of action in Korea with Mr. Morrison which the Secretary desired to have corrected. I asked him if he would undertake to appropriately amend the British record of conversations yesterday and personally inform Mr. Morrison on this point. Mr. Scott agreed to do so. The point, I said, related to the discussion on possible future bombing of Rashin, which I said would not require individual advance clearance by Washington providing that before ordering an air attack, General Ridgway determined it was militarily desirable and that it was possible to meet a rigid set of conditions established by our Joint Chiefs of Staff relative to visibility, and so forth.1 Mr. Scott treated this as a point of minor consequence, though he did revert to the subject of possible bombing attacks on the Yalu River dams and North Korean power stations in terms of the increased risks that they foresaw of unintentional violations of the Manchurian air space. I minimized this possibility though admitting that occasionally it might happen. Incidentally, Mr. Scott volunteered that Mr. Morrison had strongly supported our position on the matter of bombing these dams in his telegram to London of last evening. I then asked if any of the points which Mr. Acheson raised appeared to give them any difficulty. Mr. Scott replied that he did not think so, though they had grave doubts as to the effectiveness of an embargo on all shipments to China achieved by shipping restrictions imposed by friendly nations since this would still leave the Russian and satellite traffic untouched. I agreed that there would be leakages but said there seemed to be good grounds for moving reasonably promptly on the question of bare boat charters by western nations to the Soviet Union and satellites, particularly in light of the increased number of such charters and the fact that in the aggregate they represented so large a part of the ocean-going tonnage available to the Soviet bloc. Mr. Scott made some polite noise but appeared neither to agree nor disagree with this line of thought.
I made the point that in the matter of removing restrictions on ground movements by General Ridgway we had no thought of moving at once to the Yalu, and I also minimized the possibility which Mr. Scott suggested that the Communists in Korea might allow the fighting to peter out even in the absence of an armistice.
On the chances of an armistice, Mr. Scott seemed more hopeful [Page 905] than is our general view. He believes that the pressure for an armistice comes from the Russians themselves, who do not find the continued heavy but indecisive fighting in Korea convenient, probably from the point of view of the strain placed on their relations with the Chinese which arises from their inability or unwillingness to meet the latter’s demands for increased direct and indirect military assistance.
We then discussed at some length policy toward China and Mr. Scott outlined at some length the basic British thesis. He asked where did I think our policies would and could come into conjunction. I told him that, speaking frankly, I believed our policies would become identical with the ultimate acceptance of our basic interpretation of the irrevocable hostility of Peiping to the West and the firmness of the connection between Peiping and Moscow. I said I thought that this change in British policy would come under the pressure of events just as I felt the Chinese entrance into the Korean war had confirmed our basic diagnosis and properly shaken the British confidence in their own. I agreed that by Chinese standards the present Peiping regime seemed to have a firm hold on China, with the usual reservations as to difficulties in the south, and I agreed that there was apparent today within China no political or military force which seriously threatened the hold of Peiping.
I then asked Mr. Scott what lay behind Mr. Morrison’s thinking in connection with his statement to the Secretary that in any political discussion which would follow a successful armistice we should be careful not to have the Communist countries on one side of the table and the UN on the other. I said that I found it difficult to conceive of a realistic conference over the political future of Korea which did not have among those present the Chinese Communists and the Soviets, who were Korea’s neighbors. I said I found it equally difficult to visualize their seat at the conference table any place except opposite the UN delegations and the ROKs since they were the ones who morally and directly had backed the North Korean aggression. Mr. Scott agreed with this estimate and said that he thought the point Mr. Morrison was trying to make was that it is the principle of universality in the UN which the British consider most important. The role of policing they consider less vital to the purpose of the UN since it can be exercised effectively only if there is unity among the great powers. He added, however, that he did not think there would be any difficulty in finding a practical formula for the political conference on Korea if such came into existence.