State-JCS Meetings, lot 61 D 417
Memorandum of the Substance of Discussion at a Department of State–Joint Chiefs of Staff Meeting1
[Extracts]
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[Page 1455]Korean Negotiations
Mr. Robertson: In general I think the important thing is that we have neither retreated from nor added to the position with respect to Korea which we presented to President Rhee in our Aide-mémoire of July 2.2 There was, to be sure, in addition to that some particular commitments which we undertook with Rhee to [regarding] the handling of the POWs. These are the positions which General Clark presented to President Rhee about the handling of the Chinese as well as the Korean POWs. On POW questions I meticulously avoided getting mixed up in them since I did not want to infringe on General Clark’s authority as United Nations Commander. So that on these questions Clark personally handled them with Rhee. In general it is only fair to point out that the Koreans are completely distrustful of the armistice and that they are distrustful as to the ultimate fate of the POWs under the present armistice terms. In view of the statements that have been in the Press, I think we should make it clear that we have made absolutely no commitments to or held out any inducements to the Koreans beyond those which are in the documents which you gentlemen have already seen. Rhee continually pressed us to say that we would renew fighting if the political conference failed or that we would give the South Koreans moral and military support. I repeatedly explained to Rhee that even if President Eisenhower desired to he could not bind the U.S. to reopen hostilities. This would require action by the Congress. I also repeatedly told Rhee that we would have to preserve complete liberty of action as to what we did if the political conference should not succeed. President Rhee asked me to present his views to President Eisenhower when I came back. I did that. I described Rhee’s views to the President, to the Secretary of State and to the Foreign Affairs Committees of the Congress. I then telegraphed Rhee that the positions I had presented to him were those which were supported by all the people I had talked to. Rhee has created considerable confusion by his interviews with the Press, but the fact of the matter is that our position is exactly the same as the one that was presented in the Aide-mémoire of July 2.
General Bradley: Have we talked with Rhee about the question of getting a unified Korea through neutralization?
Mr. Robertson: Senator Knowland made a statement on the Senate floor about the desirability of the neutralization of Korea and President [Page 1456] Rhee was very much disturbed by it, but I didn’t get into the question with him at all.
General Bradley: Will the question come up at the political conference?
Mr. Robertson: Almost anything is apt to come up at the political conference.
Mr. Johnson: The Secretary has been discussing our ideas about the political conference with our Allies. He is going to have a meeting with 16 countries that have provided forces for Korea tomorrow morning. One difficulty is that everybody wants to get into the conference. The Colombians have said they would like to be in, the French said as long as there was any question of Indochina coming up they feel they must be represented. The Philippines told us they want to be represented. The Secretary’s feeling is we should try to keep the conference as small as possible and we should try to limit it to the nations that had armed forces in Korea. His feeling is that the important thing is to face the Communists with an alternative which is more distasteful to them than that of a unified, neutralized Korea. Our counters are the strength of U.S. forces in Korea, the strength of ROK forces in Korea, the economic restrictions that we are applying to the Chinese Communists and the fact that they want to get into the United Nations. This doesn’t mean that we have any intention of using Communist membership in the U.N. as a trading point. The Secretary has made that clear, but nevertheless their desire to get into the U.N. is a pressure point on our side. Our feeling is that the question of a neutralized Korea might come up in the later stages of this political conference or that perhaps it might not come up at all at this conference but be discussed later through diplomatic channels. In connection with the question of keeping up our bargaining position I have received telegrams from Clark which I haven’t gone through carefully which dealt with the possibility of redeployment of U.S. forces from his command to the zone of the interior. Is there any intention now of withdrawing U.S. forces at this time?
General Hull: Clark is just discussing plans to effect a redeployment of forces if and when he is ordered to redeploy them. We have no intention of withdrawing forces at this moment. Our general plans call for no withdrawal of forces until a political settlement has been achieved.
Admiral Fechteler: As a matter of fact the Third Marine Division is just now going out so we are increasing the forces rather than redeploying them.
Mr. Johnson: I just wanted to make sure that that was the case since we are pressing our Allies not to withdraw any of their forces.
General Hull: There might be some readjustment of forces as between Korea and Japan but these would be relatively minor.
[Page 1457]Mr. Nash: I might mention in this connection that Secretary Wilson said that yesterday the President in the course of discussing our NATO commitment had said something of the possibility of bringing back one Army division from Korea when the Marines got out there.
Generals Bradley and Hull: That is news to us. The President was the one who was most keen on getting extra strength out to Clark. We have heard nothing about the possibility of bringing any division back.
Mr. Robertson: Our Secretary was asking whose responsibility it was to make protests to the Communists about violations of the armistice. The question came up in connection with the reports that the Communists had violated the armistice by movement of aircraft into Korea.
General Bradley: We have already sent out a query about the aircraft. I should think our protests should be made through the senior member of the Military Armistice Commission.
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Greater Sanction Statement
General Lee: What is the present status of the greater sanction statement?
Mr. Johnson: It has been signed and will be issued. We have had difficulty in holding the U.K. and Canada in line on making the statement by reason of our difficulties with Rhee. We agreed with them that the statement would be included in our report to the U.N. as the Unified Command and it should come out Monday or Tuesday.3 We agreed to make the statement part of that report and to play down the fanfare that would have accompanied it if we had put it out right after the armistice.
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A note on the title page read: “Draft. Not cleared with any of participants.”
Of the JCS, General Bradley and Admiral Fechteler as well as Vice Chief General Hull attended. Matthews headed the Department of State contingent. Sullivan and Nash represented the Department of Defense, General Cabell the CIA, and Page Smith, Lay, and General Gerhard the NSC. In all, 22 persons were present. In addition to Korea, the Chinese offshore islands and the shooting down of a USAF plane over the sea of Japan by aircraft of the Soviet Union on July 29 were topics of discussion.
↩ - Text transmitted in telegram 021750Z, July 3, p. 1312.↩
- Aug. 3–4.↩