460.509/12–953
The Secretary of State to the Director of Foreign Operations (Stassen)1
Dear Harold: In your memorandum of December 9, 19532 you suggested that the NSC Planning Board be asked to re-examine our present policy regarding East-West trade controls and consider what you describe as a very different and far-reaching alternative. A discussion such as you propose would indeed be timely in the light of the recent British proposal as to what future Western policy in this field should be. However, I believe the Planning Board examination would be more fruitful if it had before it an estimate from the Intelligence Advisory Committee (IAC) as to just what the security and economic consequences might be for the free world if relaxation of controls to the extent suggested should occur.
Because of the political implications of such a relaxation, I hesitate to recommend a broad staff study of the problem as you pose it. On the other hand, since your suggestion and the British proposal are similar in many respects, it occurs to me that the facts necessary for the Planning Board’s consideration could be obtained by merely requesting an evaluation of the probable effects of Western acceptance of the United Kingdom proposal. While such a study would not encompass a consideration of changes in controls against Communist China, those controls represent, of course, a special problem in any case because of the events in Korea. In the absence of signs of a radically altered Chinese Communist approach, this special problem should not be merged with the problem of controls over trade with the U.S.S.R. and its European Satellites.
The intelligence estimate would not of course consider any of the purely domestic impacts which might be anticipated from a proposal for a relaxed East-West trade policy. Such questions, if pertinent and material, could properly be considered by the National Security Council after it had had the benefit of an intelligence estimate of the foreign consequences. Similarly the method of implementing your proposal raises other questions which probably should be examined at that time should such a shift in policy be found desirable. For example, while a unilateral announcement would undoubtedly have a tremendous psychological effect, the complex series of understandings we have with other nations in this field could not be abrogated unilaterally.
[Page 1071]As to the immediate step before us, if you concur, I shall ask the Intelligence Advisory Committee to prepare against an early deadline a National Intelligence Estimate of the security and economic effects of the British proposal.3
Sincerely yours,