Eisenhower Library, Eisenhower papers, Whitman file
Memorandum of Discussion at the 157th Meeting of the National Security Council on Thursday, July 30, 19531
eyes only
The following were present at the 157th meeting of the National Security Council: The President of the United States, presiding (except for the first part of Item 1, which was presided over by the Vice President); the Vice President of the United States; the Secretary of State; the Secretary of Defense; the Director for Mutual Security; the Director, Office of Defense Mobilization. Also present were the Secretary of the Treasury; the Attorney General; the Secretary of Commerce (for Item 1); the Assistant Secretary of Commerce (for Item 1); the Director, Bureau of the Budget; the Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission (for Item 5); the Federal Civil Defense Administrator (for Item 5); Robert R. Bowie, Department of State (for Item 5); Walter S. Delany, Office of the Director for Mutual Security (for Item 1); Kenneth R. Hansen, Economic Defense Advisory Committee (for Item 1); the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Director of Central Intelligence; Robert Cutler, Special Assistant to the President; C. D. Jackson, Special Assistant to the President; Col. Paul T. Carroll, Acting White House Staff Secretary; the Executive Secretary, NSC; Marion W. Boggs, Coordinator, NSC Planning Board Assistants.
There follows a summary of the discussion at the meeting and the chief points taken.
1. Economic Defense (NSC 152 and NSC 152/1;2 NSC Action No. 8063)
In introducing NSC 152/1 to the Council, Mr. Cutler recalled that at its 137th meeting the Council had noted a Progress Report on NSC 104/2,4 and had directed that this report be reviewed and recommendations prepared for Council consideration. Accordingly, the NSC Planning Board had prepared NSC 152, which stated four alternative lines of policy. On June 4 the Council had decided to proceed in the direction of Alternative 4. The courses of action in NSC 152/1 were designed to carry out this decision. Mr. Cutler [Page 1005] noted that about 100 pages of existing policy had been compressed into a dozen pages in NSC 152/1, so that the paper would probably seem very general to anyone reading it for the first time, but the Economic Defense Advisory Committee, which had participated with the Planning Board in the preparation of the report, felt that its meaning was quite clear to those who would have to implement it.
Mr. Cutler then said that since the Korean armistice had been signed, it would be necessary to delete paragraph 19–a of NSC 152/1, and to amend paragraphs 8 and 15 slightly. He called the attention of the Council to alternative language proposed by the Department of Defense for paragraphs 6, 18–a, 20 and 24. He also called attention to the Note by the Executive Secretary, which proposed that NSC 91/1,5NSC 104/2 and NSC 122/16 would be superseded by adoption of the present report.
Secretary Wilson said that his advisers in the Department of Defense felt that NSC 122/1 should not be superseded at this time.
Mr. Cutler then read a letter from the Secretary of Commerce which indicated that the Department of Commerce would be able to carry out its export license functions with respect to Hong Kong and Macao under NSC 152/1 if it were adopted and NSC 122/1 superseded. Should it be decided to supersede NSC 122/1, Commerce would be prepared to recommend any necessary revisions in export procedures with respect to Hong Kong and Macao.
Secretary Wilson said he believed that the Hong Kong–Macao problem was a separate one.
Mr. Cutler suggested that it might be desirable to consider the policy in NSC 152/1 firsthand then decide whether existing reports should be superseded.
Mr. Stassen called on Admiral Delany to comment on NSC 152/1 with particular reference to the alternative language proposed by the Department of Defense.
Admiral Delany said that EDAC felt that precise and concise wording was needed in the new policy. He therefore preferred to say that we should control exports which “clearly” contribute significantly to the war potential of the Soviet bloc, rather than the less precise language proposed by Defense, namely, “exports which may reasonably be shown to contribute significantly to the Soviet war potential.”
The Vice President asked what the real difference was between these two ways of phrasing the problem.
[Page 1006]Admiral Delany said that for example, television transmitters did not clearly contribute to Soviet war potential, but by a roundabout chain of reasoning it might be reasonably shown that they did so contribute.
(At this point the President entered the meeting and took the chair.)
Secretary Wilson thought machine tools would be a better example. Under the language proposed by EDAC any agency objecting to a shipment of machine tools to the Soviet bloc would have to prove clearly that they were to be used militarily before the shipment could be stopped. In practice this would be very difficult, since most such tools were interchangeable as between military and commercial use and, moreover, the onus of such proof would in most cases fall on the Department of Defense.
Mr. Cutler said the language in the report was broad enough to allow us to go almost as far as we wanted in permitting or restricting exports. He added that without the word “clearly” in the report, the present policy would not be changed very much. Admiral Delany agreed.
Secretary Dulles preferred the language in the main text, i.e., the word “clearly”. Our purpose was to switch from discouraging to encouraging trade. He felt that anything could contribute somewhat to the war potential of the Soviet bloc.
The President said he was not sure he fully understood the Defense argument.
Secretary Wilson said that if we went so far as to allow anything to be shipped to the Soviet bloc which did not clearly contribute to their war potential, we might as well use the language of the Battle Act, which referred to atomic energy materials, arms, ammunition, and implements of war.
Mr. Stassen said he believed he could sum up the proposed new policy by saying that it would result in (1) a relaxed attitude toward non-strategic items, (2) a greater concentration of control effort on a smaller number of items, and (3) a decreasing reliance by the Western countries on critical imports from the Soviet bloc.
The President felt that we should concentrate on the question of need. If our opponent needs something very badly, then that something is strategic and that is something we should keep him from getting. We should not forget that we are trying to induce the satellites to come over to our side by judicious use of trade. We must always ask ourselves how we are helping ourselves by our trade policy.
The President asked why any adverb such as “clearly” was necessary. He felt that each case should be solved on its merits, and [Page 1007] that the policy adopted should not be too restrictive, since the situation might change.
Mr. Stassen asked whether Defense was agreeable to narrowing the lists of strategic items.
Secretary Wilson replied in the affirmative, but added that he didn’t want the lists made too narrow.
Secretary Weeks said that the burden of proof under present policy was on Commerce to show that an item does not contribute to Soviet war potential. The new policy would reverse this burden of proof. He felt that reasonable men could always agree through such machinery as EDAC.
The President said again that our policy was to try to detach the satellites from the USSR. He believed that trade could help in carrying out this policy. Our trade should be used in a broad and subtle way to weaken the Soviets.
Secretary Dulles felt that our trade policy could not be absolutely rigid, and that it would have to differentiate between various countries.
The President wanted everyone to understand that he was not trying to give the USSR anything, but that his remarks had been addressed to winning the satellites away from the USSR by means of trade.
Secretary Dulles agreed that we should use trade as a weapon and, in particular, we should try to impress on the satellites the fact that they can get commodities from us which they cannot obtain from Russia.
The President said that in some cases we might not be hurting the Soviet bloc by cutting off trade between the West and the satellites, because such a policy might compel the satellites to beg Russia to give them what we would not.
The President remarked that the present paper implied that trade was a weapon only as an afterthought, whereas he felt this idea should be stated positively. The purpose of our trade should be to split the Soviet world.
Mr. C. D. Jackson also felt that the entire paper was pitched negatively.
At the suggestion of Mr. Stassen, it was agreed to add a new objective in paragraph 18, to read “to decrease, through skillful and flexible use of trade controls, the political and economic unity of the Soviet bloc.”
Mr. Cutler felt that the paper had achieved considerable flexibility, and read paragraph 20 as an example. He also noted that the problem of getting along with our allies in trade policy was an important factor.
[Page 1008]The President said that was right, and that our allies introduced an added complication that needed careful handling.
Secretary Wilson asked whether it wouldn’t be desirable to refer the report back to the NSC Planning Board for a revision in view of the new ideas expressed at the meeting.
The President said he felt these ideas were already incorporated in the paper if a few amendments were made, such as deleting the adverb “clearly” wherever it appeared. He also agreed with the suggestion made by Mr. Stassen, that “readjusted” was the correct word, rather than “relaxed”, in paragraph 20.
At the suggestion of Mr. Cutler, it was agreed that the Economic Defense Advisory Committee should review NSC 122/1 and submit to the Council any revisions which it considered necessary.
The National Security Council:
- a.
- Adopted the statement of policy contained in NSC 152/1, superseding NSC 104/2 and NSC 91/1, subject to the following changes:
Page 3, paragraph 6: In the last sentence, delete the word “clearly*” and delete the footnote to which the asterisk refers.
Page 3, paragraph 8: In the first sentence, substitute for the word “once” the words “now that”.
Page 6, paragraph 15: In the last sentence, substitute for the words “to be” the words “of making them”.
Page 7, paragraph 18–a: Delete the word “clearly*” and delete the footnote to which the asterisk refers.
Page 7: Add a new subparagraph e to paragraph 18, reading as follows: “To decrease, through flexibility in applying controls, the political and economic unity of the Soviet bloc.”
Page 7, paragraph 19: Delete subparagraph a, and revise the paragraph to read as follows: “With respect to Communist China, in the light of the Korean armistice, and pending a political settlement in Korea and a review of basic policies toward Communist China and Korea, maintain the present U.S. level of controls on transactions with Communist China and continue intensified efforts to persuade our allies to refrain from relaxing their controls on trade with Communist China.”
Page 8, paragraph 20: In the last sentence, delete the asterisk and the footnote to which it refers, and substitute for the word “relaxed” the word “readjusted”.
Page 9, paragraph 24: Delete the word “clearly*” and the footnote to which the asterisk refers.
- b.
- Directed the Economic Defense Advisory Committee to review NSC 122/1 in the light of NSC 152/1 as amended, and to submit recommendations for any revision in NSC 122/1 required to make it conform to NSC 152/1 as amended.
Note: NSC 152/1, as revised and approved by the President, subsequently circulated as NSC 152/2. The action in b above subsequently referred to EDAC for implementation.
[Here follows discussion of significant world developments affecting United States security, the report by the President’s Committee on International Information Activities of June 30, 1953, the reported decline in United States prestige abroad, Project Solarium, armaments and American policy, United States policy on Soviet and Satellite defectors, and the National Security Council status of projects.]
- This memorandum of discussion was prepared on July 31 by Boggs.↩
- NSC 152/1, dated July 22, 1953, is not printed. Except for the changes specified in this memorandum of discussion, it was textually the same as NSC 152/2, infra.↩
- NSC Action No. 806 consists of the directives issued by the NSC at its meeting of June 4, 1953; for the memorandum of discussion at that meeting, see p. 988.↩
- For the progress report under reference, dated Jan. 19, 1953, see p. 913.↩
- NSC 91/1, in Foreign Relations, 1950, vol. iv, p.227.↩
- For the text of NSC 122/1, see volume xiv.↩