Office of the Historian

17. Memorandum From William Leonhart of the Policy Planning Staff to the Assistant Secretary of State for Policy Planning (Bowie)1

Washington, March 8, 1955.
1.
Attached is NA’s revision of its preliminary draft on Japan2 to which I have appended a number of comments that seem to me to be required in order to make the NA draft acceptable within its own terms of reference.3 The new NA draft is a vastly improved document, and I think it may be accepted as a basis for NSC Planning Board discussion. What is needed is an interim statement of policy which will correct a number of unrealistic assumptions we have been making about Japan and give us time for a more fundamental reappraisal. The new paper does this admirably in at least three respects:
a.
It conveys, more adequately than any policy paper we now have, the limitations that will in the short-run hedge Japan’s activity in Asia.
b.
It brings into better focus the nature of Japan’s alignment with the free world and should make more difficult the early optimism that assumed that Japan’s commitment of interest was established and complete.
c.
It corrects the present dangerous over-emphasis on a Japanese defense build-up in disregard of the political and economic circumstances of the country.
2.
Nonetheless as a policy guide the paper falls somewhat short. It is a guide to the transactional aspects of our relations with Japan. It is a paper in the tactics, not the strategy, of national interest. It is, perhaps, an OCB paper rather than an NSC paper. It avoids many of the critical questions of importance to our longer-range objectives in Japan and the Far East and largely ignores the relevancy of means to desired ends.
3.
Even within its transactional framework, the paper leaves something to be desired. Its assignments of priorities first to political stability, next to economic strength, and then to defense capacity (para 6 and passim) risks the enfeeblement of the entire range of our policy by bringing our defense efforts—indefinitely—down to the present attenuated levels of our political and economic programs. Over the longer run we need the revitalization of the latter rather than the diminution of the former. We need to come up with something better [Page 28] than an exhortation to “encourage the development of an effective, unified, moderate conservative government in Japan” and the restricted programs now contemplated to flesh out the words in the paper’s economic section (see para 8).
4.
In sum, I believe there is still room for a more fundamental appraisal of the Japanese problem and, it seems to me, that this will have to be coordinated under the working level auspices of S/P and not those of the Bureau. Such a study would focus on:
a.
The political role of Japan in the Pacific and vis-à-vis the free and the communist Asian mainland;
b.
The volume and justification of U.S. support for Japan’s investment requirements assuming the existence or the absence of an Asian development program;
c.
The effect of technological changes in warfare on U.S. security requirements in Japan;
d.
The prospects for political stability in Japan and the capabilities of U.S. influence over these prospects.
5.
Both considerations of NSC deadlines and NA’s obvious reluctance to relinquish its responsibility for this paper militate against reworking this draft in its entirety. Further, unless we were to do only another interim paper, we would have to anticipate the conclusions of our longer study on an Asian economic program. Accordingly, I suggest we have incorporated in the NSC paper an instruction to the Department to prepare for submission to the NSC at a later date a statement of our long-range policy objectives with respect to Japan.
  1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 611.94/3–855. Top Secret.↩
  2. Dated March 7, not printed. Regarding the earlier paper, see footnote 3, Document 11.↩
  3. An attached March 8 memorandum from Leonhart to McClurkin recommending specific changes in the text of the March 7 draft NSC paper is not printed.↩