Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, China, Volume XIX

316. Memorandum From the Assistant Secretary of State for Policy Planning (Smith) to Secretary of State Herter⁰

Washington, November 17, 1959.

SUBJECT

• The Tactic of “Partial Responsibility”

The question of our attitude toward the Sino-Soviet relationship is such an important one that I would like to add some further thoughts to those expressed to you by Mr. Kohler and Mr. Parsons in their memoranda of October 16 and November 4.¹

I would like to support Mr. Parsons in suggesting that “partial responsibility” be considered a flexible and selectively applied tactic. The term “doctrine”, which has been used by the press, implies a kind of fixity and permanence which seems out of keeping with our hopes and perhaps our expectations.

However, the direct assertion of partial Soviet responsibility for Chinese Communist actions seems to me to have certain drawbacks which should be kept in mind along with the advantages set forth by Mr. Parsons. As he points out, its use may be considered in connection with three possible objectives:

(1) Seeking to effect some restraint on Chinese Communist actions;

(2) Aggravating Soviet Chinese Communist frictions; and

(3) Achieving propaganda effect in the non-Communist world.

1. Use of the USSR as a brake on Chinese Communist actions may well have best chances of success if it takes place quietly and without reference on our part to Soviet responsibility. Although the USSR has valuable sources of influence over Communist China, it seems that in no sense can the Soviet Union be said to have firm control over Chinese Communist actions. Past Chinese statements which seem to recognize the USSR as the undisputed leader of the Soviet bloc may have been made in complete sincerity, but it is more likely that the Chinese did not expect them to be taken quite at full face value in Moscow. The traditions of Chinese etiquette require self-deprecatory remarks, on appropriate occasions, which are neither meant nor expected to be believed. Nehru, for instance, appears to have been misled by comments of Chou En-lai, who reportedly characterized himself as a younger brother needing Nehru’s guidance and instruction. Mao Tse-tung built his power on the masses of peasants in violation of Soviet theory and guidance, which envisaged use of China’s industrial proletariat as a revolutionary base. The Yugoslavs said that Stalin, right after World War II, wanted the Chinese Communists to enter a coalition government with the KMT; the Chinese Communists did not. Again, in the case of the communes, the Chinese are pursuing an independent policy. The foregoing instances relate to Chinese domestic policy matters in which Soviet guidance has not been accepted. We may be in the beginning of a period in which Communist China will resist Soviet guidance also in the field of foreign affairs, at first in matters concerning China’s immediate neighbors. Communist insistence that Taiwan is a “purely internal” affair of China, which pushes the definitions of those words beyond logical limits, and Chinese behavior along the frontiers of India both suggest that such a period has begun. Mao Tse-tung, in seeking a predominant voice in bloc decisions relating to Asian affairs, may be subject to a number of inhibiting factors, but he will be abetted by the conviction that he is Khrushchev’s superior in matters of revolutionary strategy as applied to Asia.

Khrushchev’s difficulties in restraining Chinese Communist actions are likely to be proportionate to the degree of public knowledge that he is attempting to do so. This is so because of his ally’s very Chinese sensitivity in matters involving individual and national face. “Face” is a matter of public stance before an audience rather than a question of inner self-esteem. The more public attention is focused on a trial of respective wills, the more “face” is lost by the loser. Moreover, as Mr. Kohler has suggested in his memorandum to you, if Khrushchev cannot persuade the Chinese Communists in private, he must side with them in public: Soviet prestige and the screening from view of fissures in the alliance both would require his doing so. So while public reference to Soviet responsibility for any particular Chinese Communist actions will not rule out successful Soviet influence, it probably will reduce its chances.

2. Sino-Soviet friction can be a useful result of successful efforts to get the USSR to try to serve as a brake on the Chinese Communists. However, the friction is in the nature of a by-product. If we seek it as a primary result, the USSR is virtually certain to recognize our aim, conclude we are not seriously negotiating with it, and prove unwilling to repeat its efforts. We would thus have damaged or destroyed its usefulness to us as a means of bringing pressure to bear on the Chinese.

3. It should also be kept in mind that the US, too, is vulnerable to charges of partial responsibility for the actions of another state.² In view of our self-admitted role of leadership and the lack of responsiveness to our wishes of some governments dependent on us, the propaganda weapon is a two-edged one. This does not argue it should never be used, but rather that the results will not necessarily represent gain and could be counter-productive.

Conclusion: Although the USSR can be said to have partial responsibility for some Chinese Communist actions, and it may on occasion be useful to point to that fact, we should do so with a frequency which is in inverse proportion to the importance we attach to probable usefulness of the USSR as a brake on the Chinese Communists. Such usefulness appears most obvious in a period such as the present, when the USSR seems intent on reducing tensions and avoiding war. It might still continue, in a period of reversion to earlier Soviet attitudes and tactics, at least with respect to narrower aims in which Soviet interests happened to parallel our own.

0. Source: Department of State, FE Files: Lot 61 D 6, Partial Responsibility Doctrine. Confidential. Drafted by Edward E. Rice and George A. Morgan of the Policy Planning Staff. Sent through Merchant. The source text is an unsigned copy sent to Parsons.
1. Documents 308 and 312.

2. A handwritten note on the source text, keyed to an asterisk in the margin beside this sentence, reads:

   “It has been used against us with effect: e.g., Suez & Indonesia. By making us assume partial responsibility for the colonial policies of our allies, the Communist bloc has succeeded in getting us to exercise a moderating influence on our allies.”