Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, The Near and Middle East, Volume IX, Part 1

State-JCS Meetings, lot 61 D 417

No. 103
Department of State Minutes of State-Joint Chiefs of Staff Meeting¹

top secret

Washington, October 29, 1952.²

Present

• General Bradley
• General Lemnitzer
• Colonel Wright
• Mr. Matthews
• Mr. Bohlen
• General Twining
• Admiral Duncan
• Admiral Fife
• Mr. Nitze
• Mr. Byroade
• Mr. Jernegan
• General Ruffner
• Admiral Wooldridge
• General Cabell
• Mr. Daspit
• Mr. Stelle

General Bradley: Before we begin on the Middle East, there is one point I would like to take up. We have a message drafted to send Clark which gives him authority to release the movies and other material on the POW’s in our camps. There is a question of whether or not the commercial press should be allowed to interview the prisoners. This message gives Clark discretion. We understand this has been worked out with your people but we thought we might just check with you before sending it off.

Mr. Bohlen: It seems to me the only question would be one of timing, particularly with the General Assembly Debate coming up.

General Lemnitzer: The actual timing of it would be coordinated by your people so that it will fit in with what is happening in the General Assembly. I think that can be worked out satisfactorily.

middle east

Mr. Matthews: We have had your letter³ which brings out the point that you will need time for careful study before you can treat the Middle Eastern force requirements and which lays out some of the general strategic considerations of the Middle East Defense. There are some questions of timing which we have to meet which we thought would be useful for Byroade to present to you today.

Mr. Byroade: Our general strategic concept in the past has been based on UK responsibility for the Middle East. With the developments of the past few years we have felt the need to review our general approach to the Middle East and in connection with that we asked the JCS to provide a military paper. We realize the difficulty of the questions that are involved in the Middle East Defense. But there are several factors which make a review of our general approach to the area urgent. When we survey the Middle Eastern area we cannot but be impressed by both the importance of the area to the United States and the present widespread instability in the area. In this important and unstable region we are now essentially carrying on only Point-Four activities. We feel that we must do more than this. We have been studying very carefully economic developmental projects which might be undertaken, but we are told by our people in the field that at the present time we could probably secure quicker and greater political gains from relatively small programs of military assistance and provision of military equipment than we could from economic assistance. Right now, for example, in Egypt there is a situation in which a moderate amount of military assistance might be calculated to promise really important political dividends. Iraq and Pakistan are also areas where prospects exist that military assistance would be politically valuable. From the purely political as apart from the military point of view we have come to the conclusion that we should ask for military assistance funds in the next year’s budget and that we should not merely rely on the 10 per cent transfer provision of the Greek-Turkish appropriation. From our conversations with the office of the Secretary of Defense we gain the impression that the bottleneck in military assistance might in the future be one of dollars rather than equipment. From the political point of view we arrive at the tentative conclusion that something of the order of two hundred million dollars might be requested. I have already talked with the Budget Bureau and have presented the case for a military assistance program for the Middle East from a political and not military point of view. Some time ago the Budget Bureau asked when the military case would be provided. Originally I told them I thought it might be forthcoming the first of November. Yesterday I talked with them again and said I didn’t know when it would be available. On this part of the problem I have a question—whether we need an exhaustive formal JCS study or whether some general statements of military desirability are not what is called for.

General Bradley: There is no question that we are in favor of MEDO and that military assistance to the area would be important. But the question that we were asked dealt with force requirements. We don’t have enough information to give a really adequate answer on force requirements, and we can’t expect to get a really accurate answer until we have a MEDO planning organization which could provide detailed information on the capabilities and potential forces of the countries of the area. The British have made an estimate of force requirements for the defense of the Middle East on a forward line. It runs to something like 20 divisions and 1200 aircraft. Without careful study of the situation we hesitate to put the stamp of JCS approval on any such estimate.

Mr. Nitze: Would the British force requirement estimates include or exclude the 10 Turkish Divisions.

Col. Wright: They included 10 Turkish Divisions and as I remember 9 other divisions for the other sectors, making a total of 19.

General Bradley: We have asked our planning teams which are working on 1955–56 requirements to provide us with information on the Middle East by the first of July next year. We have already asked them to push up our deadline to the first of January. I don’t see how you could speed up their work any more than that and hope to get anything out of it.

Mr. Byroade: What we need at this time is a fairly general statement which would justify a budget request.

General Bradley: The difficulty is we don’t know the status of the units in the area, the size of the forces or their make-up. I can’t help but be concerned with the embarrassing questions I might have to answer on the Hill in defense of a budget request.

Mr. Nitze: Isn’t it a question as to whether on the one hand it is better not to go up to the Hill with a request for military assistance funds for the Middle East or whether we should ask for it now but say frankly the area has hitherto been a British responsibility, that we will have to carefully study precisely what needs to be done but that we feel that appropriations for military assistance now would be a useful tool in dealing with the area.

General Bradley: It seems to me that it is sensible to save a year by making the request now, even though we would have to say that we don’t have full knowledge of just what the situation is.

General Cabell: Isn’t the problem that State needs a testimonial for budget purposes. The JCS is not in a position to give this testimonial by normal planning processes and in that case wouldn’t it be useful for State to draft the kind of statement that they think they need and to check it with our people.

Admiral Duncan: It seems to me that we do have one question to consider and that is what we could say to objections about the capabilities of the people in the area to assimilate, use, and maintain military equipment that we might provide. My impression is that there are fairly severe limits along this line.

Mr. Byroade: We will have a list of military items from Egypt in a couple of weeks. Admittedly, this is not a systematic way of going about the problem. It really is a question of timing.

General Bradley: It would seem to me that it was better not to lose a year by attempting to be too systematic. I have a question as to whether you are including India in this program.

Mr. Byroade: It might be that for political reasons we would have to do something for India, particularly if Pakistan were given military assistance. There are other places such as Syria and Egypt where military equipment could be of immediate utility to the forces they already have organized and would bring political dividends.

Mr. Nitze: We also had related questions in connection with the studies that are now going on under the directive which stems from NSC 135.⁴ It is difficult to get ahead with these studies without comments from the Joint Staff, and NSC 135 particularly stressed that we should look into the possibilities of doing more in the Near East and Far East.

General Bradley: We can make a general statement but we wouldn’t be in a position to draw specific force tabs.

Mr. Nitze: We can understand that. What we would like, however, would be general support for the budget justification, and the best advice that you people can give us at this stage on NSC 135.

Mr. Matthews: What about Cabell’s suggestion that State should draft a general statement. I should think it would be useful if someone from your staff could work with us in getting up such a statement.

General Bradley: We can have Colonel Breit of the Joint Staff work with you on the general statement, but I think when it comes to testimony on the Hill we are going to have to be in a better position than we are now. Some of us will probably have to make a swing around and look into the situation in the area.

[Here follows discussion of the Party Congress in Moscow.]

middle east

Admiral Duncan: I would like to go back for a minute to the Middle East question and ask whether the proposed program would supplant the 10 per cent transfer arrangement that we have now.

Mr. Byroade: We would prefer to keep the flexibility which we gained from the 10 per cent transfer clause and still get additional funds for this area.

Admiral Duncan: It seems to me there is a real question what programs the equipment would come out of. Right now we are having a hard time to get material to match appropriated funds. Tossing in another two-hundred million dollar appropriation wouldn’t really answer the question where the equipment was coming from.

Mr. Byroade: It was my understanding that money rather than equipment would pretty soon be the major problem.

General Bradley: In general terms of availability of steel and materials, I understand that resources will not be the problem by about next fall.

General Lemnitzer: The difficulty is that we need the same kind of items for South Korea, Indochina, and Formosa as we do for the Middle East, and even though there is plenty of steel there is a wide gap between availability of steel and weapons production.

Mr. Nitze: It seems clear that there will be two phases. Right now, even though you need to appropriate money for any new programs, it may be that you won’t have immediately the equipment to spend the money for. Within a fairly short period of time the problem will change to one of not having enough money to keep the present productive facilities going.

Admiral Duncan: We still have to face the question of how to fit in this Middle East program with other programs.

Mr. Nitze: We had hoped that the NSC 135 exercise might give some guidance in answering that question.

Mr. Matthews: Schuman and Eden will be coming over and will be talking with our Secretary very shortly. They may raise questions having to do with the recent 5-Power Military talks on Southeast Asia.⁵ We were wondering when we could hear what the results of those talks were.

General Bradley: There is a report which hasn’t been approved by the JCS, but we can give you copies of that right away.

1. A notation on the first page reads: “State Draft. Not cleared with any of the participants.”
2. The meeting was held at 11 a.m. in the Pentagon.
3. The letter from the Secretary of Defense, dated Oct. 28, is not printed, but see footnote 3, Document 83. (780.5/10–2852)
4. Regarding NSC 135, see the editorial note, vol. II, Part 1, p. 56.
5. For documentation on the Five-Power Military Conference on Southeast Asia, which met in Washington from Oct. 6 to Oct. 17, 1952, see vol. XII, Part 1, pp. 230 ff.