Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volumes VII, VIII, IX, Arms Control; National Security Policy; Foreign Economic Policy, Microfiche Supplement

271. Draft Paper, June 22¹

June 22, 1962

BASIC NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY

PART ONE: PRINCIPLES AND PURPOSES

Introduction

1. In order to outline national security policy in Part Two of this paper, it is necessary first to lay out the broad principles and purposes which generate these policies; which determine their relative importance and urgency; and which should govern their execution and revision in the light of changing circumstances.

Part One has two major elements:

a. A definition of the working goal of National Security Policy. (Chapter I)

b. A brief statement of the strategic components of a national policy designed to move towards that goal. (Chapter II). These components are outlined in more detail in Part Two, where specific policy prescriptions and injunctions are to be found.

I. THE WORKING GOAL

A. The Foundations of National Security Policy

2. National Purposes. Our fundamental purposes as a nation remain what they have been since they were first set down in the Preamble to the Constitution: “. . . . to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” Further, the Declaration of Independence committed us to the principle that “. . . . Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . . .” This principle has run like a thread throughout the history of our relations with the rest of the world, with a meaning and force dependent on the specific problems we confronted. Its special application in the circumstances we face now and over the foreseeable future is elaborated in this document.

3. The National Security Objective. National security policy should aim at promoting and maintaining a world environment in which these abiding national purposes can be best attained—notably an international environment in which it will be possible “to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” and thus to maintain a free and independent United States, capable of preserving and enhancing its fundamental values and institutions as a nation and a community of free citizens.

B. The Setting

4. The Forces at Work. In our time an environment congenial to our national purposes must be maintained in the face of deep-seated Soviet and Chinese Communist determination to seize and exploit global power, and in a setting where certain other powerful, persistent, and sometimes dangerous forces are at work:

—A rapid increase in scientific knowledge and its applications, which enables man to change, for good or for evil, his physical and ecological environment, and which imposes a high premium on the capacity of nations to innovate and to adjust to innovation.

—In consequence of the pace of scientific change, a revolution in military technology, which has altered drastically the nature and the results of war, yielded an intense competitive arms race, affected former relationships between economic potential and military strength, and created an imbalance of the offensive over the defensive in the nuclear weapons field.

—A political revolution, marked by the proliferation of ardent new nations at a time when an intensified interdependence requires the nation state to cooperate increasingly with others in order to provide for its security and its economic welfare.

—The revolution of modernization in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, including those underdeveloped areas under Communist control.

—The population explosion which, in many parts of the world, threatens to frustrate the drive for improved standards of individual welfare.

—The revival of economic momentum and political assertiveness in Western Europe and Japan.

—The revolution in modern communications, which has radically increased the speed and sensitivity of political and psychological reactions within and among nations.

Taken together, these forces decree a world setting where power and influence are being progressively diffused within, as well as without, the Communist Bloc; where strong inhibitions exist against all-out use of military force; where the interaction of societies and sovereign nations becomes progressively more intimate.

5. The Clash. This environment both conditions and is conditioned by the clash between Western and Communist ideologies and between the interests and objectives of their two principal proponents: the US and the USSR. This clash has many dimensions. In its largest sense it may be viewed as a contest between competing conceptions of how the world community should be organized—how a new world order can be constructed to replace the one which existed before 1914 and which has been shattered by a half century of war and revolution.

This manner of viewing the clash is not abstract: governments and citizens throughout the world assess the trend of forces and events in some such terms, sensing that, in the end, one conception or the other will constitute the framework for organizing the planet. Current diplomacy and popular moods are directly affected by this assessment of the long run outcome of the clash.

The major dynamic elements in the international environment cited above will not automatically determine the outcome: they cut both ways. For example:

—The product of the scientific and technological revolution is available to the Communist as well as to ourselves and, given the capacity of a totalitarian state to concentrate resources on a narrow front, it is particularly susceptible to selective Communist exploitation.

—The revolution in military technology has strengthened the absolute power of the Communist Bloc, as well as our own. It has provided the Soviet Union with a capacity to assault, directly and swiftly, American territory but it also has generated inhibitions against the use of major force which are inevitably felt by the Communists as well as ourselves.

—Although nationalism and the revolution of modernization in the under-developed areas strengthen the forces making for independent nationhood, they release anti-Western sentiments, racial passions, particularist tendencies of all sorts, and create domestic pressures and turmoil susceptible to Communist exploitation.

—The revival of momentum in Western Europe and Japan has increased the strength of the non-Communist world, but the corresponding increase in assertiveness has set up strains and tensions, and increased also the possibilities of disunity which are capable of Communist exploitation. It is axiomatic, therefore, that the positive purposes of American policy can be achieved only by overcoming the considerable resistance inherent in the forces at work in the world environment; by designing policies which take these forces fully into account, if possible harnessing them for our central purposes; and by countering the persistent Communist efforts to use them to disrupt and destroy the non-Communist world.

C. The Threat

6. The Nature of the Communist Threat. Although the Communist threat takes many forms, there are four which are particularly significant:

a. The Communists command now—and will command increasingly—a capacity to inflict severe damage and casualties on the United States and its allies, particularly NATO Europe. Nuclear war itself, whether undertaken rationally, irrationally, or by accident, is therefore, one threat to the American interest; although the safety of the nation and the possibility of deterring Communist aggression require that we be prepared to face nuclear war in defense of our vital interests, and that this fact be universally understood.

b. The Communists might seek to exploit their economic and scientific resources so as to achieve marked military superiority. Even though a margin of superiority would not necessarily lead them to initiate a direct attack upon the United States, it could generate increased aggressiveness, give rise to diplomatic and psychological pressures hard to control and damaging to our interests, and pose a critical threat to contiguous areas, particularly NATO Europe, Japan, and the Indian Peninsula, on which regions the balance of power in Eurasia evidently depends. Aside from the reasons elaborated in Part Two, Chapter I, the United States should, therefore, maintain forces sufficient to avoid the emergence of such a margin of Communist military superiority.

c. Even without a general shift in the balance of military power, some areas of Eurasia, Africa, or Latin America might come under Communist control. Major losses of territory or of resources would make it harder for the US to help shape the kind of world environment it desires; might generate defeatism among governments and peoples in the non-Communist world; and could make more difficult the maintenance of a favorable balance of military power between East and West. Even though an effective nuclear deterrent can be maintained from an economic and geographic base narrower than that now available to the United States, a substantial reduction of the present area of freedom would have radically unfavorable political and economic consequences for the United States, and would complicate the tasks of defense. The United States continues to have, therefore, an abiding and straightforward interest in maintaining and improving the balance of economic and political power on the world scene which rests in the hands of the free community.

d. Quite aside from its direct or indirect implications for the balance of power the extension of Communism in Eurasia, Africa, and Latin America would represent a threat to the national interest. In conditions of modern technology and especially modern communications it is difficult to envisage the survival of democratic American society or, indeed, an Atlantic Community as a beleaguered island in a totalitarian sea. It is, therefore, in the national interest that the societies of Eurasia, Africa, and Latin America maintain their independence and develop along lines which respect those elements in their own culture and tradition which would limit the power of the state over the individual and are thus broadly consonant with our own concepts of individual liberty and governments based on consent. We do not need societies abroad in our own image; and, in any case, the democratic process must be viewed as a matter of underlying purpose, of degree, and direction of movement, not as an absolute condition. Moreover, our interest does not require that all societies at all times accept democratic values as their aspiration and that they move uninterruptedly towards its achievement. Nevertheless, the nation is legitimately concerned with the balance and trend of ideological forces throughout the world in just as real a sense as it is concerned with the balance and trend of material and military forces.

The policy outlined in this paper is designed, therefore, to achieve the national purposes set forth in paragraph 2 and to minimize—without sacrificing vital US security interests—the likelihood of a war so destructive as to threaten our basic national structure and institutions; a change in the military balance of power which could markedly affect both the political and psychological balance between East and West; a progressive extension of Communist influence into Eurasia, Africa, and Latin America; or a shift in the ideological environment which would make it difficult to develop in continuity with the basic values derived from our history. It is also designed to accelerate constructive changes in the character and policies of the Communist regimes, to erode the grip of Communism on peoples under its rule and to facilitate their absorption into the community of free nations.

D. The Opportunity

7. Favorable Factors. This policy aims equally, however, to harness to the American interest the same set of forces which decree the perils we face.

a. Properly exploited, the resources available to us and to our allies should enable us to continue to make the use of military force irrational and unattractive to the Communists.

b. The pluralistic concepts and methods of organization inherent in democratic societies make it easier for us than for the Communists authentically to back the evolution of independent national states and to deal with them on the basis of limited but real areas of overlapping interest. The growth of nationalism and the diffusion of power on the world scene are fundamentally more disruptive forces for the Communists than for ourselves, since their methods for organizing both domestic and international power inherently require centralization and, ultimately, dictatorship if they are to maintain their effectiveness.

c. The underlying aspiration of peoples for forms of political and social organization which protect the individual against the unlimited authority of the state is strong, and rooted in abiding historical, cultural, and religious commitments. If an environment of regular movement forward towards economic progress and social justice can be created, the long-run chances of victory for political democracy—in one form or another—are good. The lessons of experience thus far is that this convergence of abiding impulses to human freedom and rising standards of welfare operates also within societies ruled by Communist regimes; and long run tendencies towards the diffusion of power and a reduction in thrust towards the external world within and from such societies may be expected, if the non-Communist world continues to maintain forces which make Communist aggression costly and unattractive.

d. The technical fact of increasingly intimate military, economic, and political interdependence can, with an appropriate American policy, be made to work for, rather than against, our interests.

In short, while the forces now so strongly at work on the world scene are capable of being captured by the Communists for destructive purposes, they lend themselves at least equally to direction along constructive lines for the building of the kind of world within which our own society could continue to flourish.

E. Our Constructive Goal: A Free Community

8. The Long Term Goal. Our purposes must be given operational substance in the light of this assessment of the threats and opportunities inherent in the forces at work on the world scene. The operative constructive goal of United States policy is to foster and develop an evolving international community, the members of which;

a. Effectively cooperate with and support one another in their areas of interdependence.

b. Move forward in their own ways toward political systems based increasingly on consent and individual freedom.

c. Yield for their peoples steady progress in economic welfare and social justice.

d. Settle their differences by political means or legal processes rather than by armed conflict.

e. Increasingly participate in institutions and organizations which transcend the independent powers of the nation-state, where this is useful to achievement of the larger purposes set forth in this paper.

f. Move progressively towards a legal order which lays down and enforces essential rules of conduct in interstate relations and provides sure and equitable means for the settlement of international disputes.

Progress in building a community with these six essential characteristics would reduce the risks both of an upset in the balance of power and of an unfavorable ideological trend among the presently non-Communist nations. Indeed, by moving toward this long-term positive goal we best mitigate these two risks, since only in this way are we likely to get an efficient grasp on the forces which generate these risks.

The creation of a free world community is, evidently a task which will remain unfinished business for a long time. The problems confronted will yield only slowly to sustained effort; and the US influence on the process of its creation can only be marginal. It is, however, a goal toward which even modest progress can contribute substantially to the national interest. It is one way of giving life to our commitment to the United Nations Charter; and the United Nations remains an important means for its implementation.

9. Prospects and Problems. This working goal—of an evolving community of nations—proceeds directly from values and commitments deeply embedded in our national style and domestic arrangements, just as the Communist concept of a world order is linked intimately to the methods used to organize power within Communist states. From our historical origins as a nation we have sought a balance between freedom and law, between individual liberty and individual responsibility for the fate of the community, which would permit our society to solve its problems with minimum intrusion by higher authority. It is in a world organized in this federal spirit that we are most likely not only to avert pressing dangers but also to fulfill the central objective of basic national security policy—to shape the external environment along lines congenial to our abiding national values and purposes. And a foreign policy rooted in those values and purposes is most likely to evoke from our people the sustained attention, energy and resources required for its success.

While this aim harmonizes with our domestic polity and is thus natural and fitting for us, the nations in the world about us generally have not shared our historical experience. Thus, questions may be raised as to the feasibility of progress toward an evolving world community in which nations are moving toward democratic goals and in which they increasingly concert to achieve their common purposes.

To take the question of ideology first: many non-Communist nations are not now organized on lines which can accurately be described as democratic. The attainment of a significant degree of democratic practice depends upon the development of a complex set of preconditions, which are often lacking, in greater or less degree. Nevertheless, there are realistic grounds for hope that many of these preconditions will come into being if these nations can maintain their national independence, make progress in raising their living standards, organize their lives with increasing attention to social justice, and are confronted with effective constraints on the disruptive pursuit of irresponsible national objectives. The economic, social, and political systems that will emerge if these conditions are fulfilled may not appear to be ours; indeed, to survive they must be consistent with the history, culture, and acknowledged goals of each society. What is essential is that the peoples concerned move in their own ways toward governments which are based increasingly on consent and which increasingly respect individual freedom. Obviously the pace and extent of this movement will vary greatly; some nations just emerging into independence and lacking most of the prerequisites to freedom will be under rule which is authoritarian, in varying degree, for a very long time indeed. The preconditions for economic growth are less complex and far-reaching than the preconditions for effective political democracy. Regular economic growth can, therefore, usually be generated at a stage earlier than the emergence of mature democratic political institutions and practices. But the possibility that consent and individual liberties will play a larger—rather than smaller—role in the political affairs of the non-Communist nations over the years ahead does not seem unrealistic, and US policy and programs should be addressed systematically to this end.

Nor does the goal of a community of increasingly cooperative independent states seem impractical. At the moment nationalism remains a most powerful force. And there are, of course, rifts and deep-seated conflicts within the non-Communist world which make whole-hearted cooperation between some states difficult to envisage and perhaps unlikely over the foreseeable future. However, the members of the free community share a threat to their independence—however dimly realized and hesitantly articulated; and that threat has led many of them to band together overtly against the threat of Communist coercion. Moreover, as indicated in Part Two, Section III of this paper, the fact of interdependence finds expression more broadly in an extraordinary array of bilateral arrangements and international organizations, each—whatever its present worth—proceeding from a recognized area of common interest in the solution of problems which cannot be met on a purely national basis. In holding up the vision of a community of nations cooperating freely for the easier attainment of their own objectives we are, therefore, building on impulses and institutions which are real. The task is one of imparting more vitality and direction to these impulses and institutions.

To develop a willingness to settle disputes and to reconcile conflicting interests without recourse to arms is by no means easy or assured—especially where these conflicts are with Communist states which do not share Western concepts of law. Even within the community of free nations there are deeply felt conflicts over which there is reluctance or refusal to submit differences to judicial decision, arbitration, or even negotiation. And such (usually) intraregional conflicts may persist as a source of danger to the peace for a long time. Nevertheless, the United Nations Charter lays down rules of conduct governing the manner in which nations should act; and the task of strengthening the will to live by that code within the free community does not appear hopeless. Recognizing the imperfections which characterize the present ideological and organizational contours of the non-Communist world, movement towards the goal of a free community does not run against the grain of history: it requires that we support and build on forces already in motion, rather than to invent new forces.

Our actions in support of this working goal must be directed, then, not merely against Communist tactics and strategy but also towards creating, within the limits of our capacity to shape events, the kind of evolving world environment within which our own society can continue to flourish. This would be our purpose even if Marx and Lenin had never existed, but, because their heirs are now attempting to impose their version of the future on all mankind, the requisite urgency and scale of national effort is the greater. In pursuing this positive purpose, we face a future of shifting crisis, of sustained constructive effort, and of national peril for as long as any of us can peer ahead.

II. Outline of A Strategy

A. Introduction

1. Need for A Strategy. To be meaningful, this statement of principles and purposes must not only define a goal but also lay out the means of its attainment. We must frame a broad strategy which will ensure that the wide range of U.S. activities at home and abroad are consistent with this goal. The U.S. ability to influence events is too limited, and the obstacles we confront too grave, for our objectives to be achieved in the absence of such a broad central strategy—clearly defined and thoroughly understood at all levels of the government. Only through such a working strategy can we ensure that the instruments of our power and influence are marshaled on behalf of the measures which should have highest priority, and that our efforts are mutually reinforcing, rather than diffuse or, even, offsetting in their effect. Only in the light of such a strategy can these efforts be presented to our own and to other peoples as interrelated elements of a coherent policy which merits their support.

2. Objective. Our working goal of developing progressively the free community comprises three strategic objectives: maintaining the frontiers of freedom; building the community itself; and peacefully extending this community beyond the present borders of freedom. The paragraphs that follow identify the five main components of a strategy to reach these objectives.

B. Military Policy

3. The Role of Force. At the center of this community must remain American military power and the will to use it, linked to the power that can be generated elsewhere in the free community, organized so as to cover the full spectrum of force. Given the wide-ranging character of Communist techniques of aggression, U.S. military power and that of our allies must be closely coordinated with other means for the exercise of power and influence: economic, political, and ideological. The international order we seek to build requires now—and for the foreseeable future—an ability and readiness to use force in this wide sense for several purposes, including two which are basic:

—To deter or to deal effectively with the flexible arsenal of Communist techniques of aggression against or within the frontiers of the free community;

—To support diplomatic efforts to protect and advance U.S. and free world interests.

4. A Stable Military Environment. We wish to be able to use this force effectively and in such a way as to minimize the likelihood of a large-scale nuclear war, whether initiated by the Communists, originated by us in defense of our vital interests, or arising from local conflicts, armed clashes, and hostile confrontations. This requires on the one hand the existence of ready force, and a firmness and a resolution which will convince the Communists that aggressive actions and heavy pressures are dangerous and unprofitable, and on the other hand a continued restraint which furthers peaceful settlement of disputes and encourages favorable evolutionary trends within the Communist Bloc. To strike a balance between deterrence and seeming aggressiveness, and to back this attitude with the forces needed persuasively to support it, is perhaps the most difficult task confronting the United States today. The key issues of military policy and arms control involved in thus creating an environment which is unlikely to erupt into nuclear war under the strain of crises or the actual use of limited force are treated in Part Two, Chapter I, of this paper.

Besides stability with respect to nuclear conflict, we wish also to create and sustain a stable environment so far as conflict in underdeveloped areas is concerned. The use of force by emerging nations should be discouraged and, if possible forestalled altogether. New nations, often stridently nationalistic, may display the same hostility toward neighbors that for so long characterized European nation-states, and there may be a growing tendency for the stronger ones to indulge this hostility. Our policy should work toward suppressing such misuse of force by making clear to new nations that it would bring them more loss than gain. Our policy should seek to deter local imperialisms of this sort through economic and political means. The effectiveness of these means will depend largely upon how well aware the new nations are made of our ability and will to use force when necessary to keep the peace.

C. The Role of Progress

5. Progress Within the Free Community. Within the framework of power designed to protect the frontiers of freedom and to induce processes of peaceful change, a central objective of policy must be to seek to create an environment of sustained progress towards higher standards of economic welfare, social justice, individual liberties, and popularly based governments throughout the free community. The problem is particularly acute in the less developed areas of Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Since the evolving community of independent nations can only be maintained by consent, the emerging less developed nations must be persuaded that their human and national aspirations will be better fulfilled within the compass of that community than without. Measures required to help assure an environment of sustained progress for the more advanced nations of the free community are considered in Part Two, Chapter III, and for the less developed nations in Part Two, Chapter II.

D. The Framework of Organization

6. The Hard Core. The missions of force and progress discussed under B and C, above, require that the free community generate a hard core of developed nations (to include the Atlantic Community, and, in somewhat different degree, Japan, Australia and New Zealand) which are broadly committed to this world strategy, willing to concert their resources for these defensive and constructive tasks beyond their borders, and able to draw together with the less developed nations in a network of common ties of mutual advantage for those purposes. The means of building such a hard core and relating it systematically to other areas of the free community are considered in Part Two, Chapter III.

7. U.S. Regional Interests. Regional policy problems are dealt with in Part Two under the general headings “Policy Toward the Underdeveloped Areas” (Chapter II) and “The Framework of Organization” (Chapter III). Certain limited, basic observations on the character of the U.S. interest and objectives in particular regions are set down here.

a. Latin America. Although the problems confronted by the U.S. in Latin America are a special version of those confronted in other less developed regions, and, although the distance of the region from the borders of the Communist Bloc reduces its vulnerability to certain types of more direct Communist pressure felt elsewhere, the U.S. relation to Central and South America is, nevertheless, peculiarly important. The special status of Latin America derives from the sensitivity of our people to the course of events there, rooted, in turn, in geographic proximity, the length of our historical association, and the scale of our economic interests. The containment of the Communist thrust in Latin America, the maintenance of the independence of the region, and the development there of conditions of reasonable progress and order are required both to fulfill the general conditions of national security policy and to permit a political setting at home in which our people will support the exertion of U.S. power and influence on a world basis. Within the range of policy outlined in Part Two of this paper for the underdeveloped areas, Latin America enjoys, therefore, a high and urgent priority.

b. The Rimland of Asia. The arc from Iran to Korea represents an area where the balance of power between the Communist Bloc and the free community is so precariously held that with relatively minor exceptions, the free community cannot afford an extension of Communist influence without risking loss which would extend far beyond the area immediately affected. The definitive loss of South Korea to Communism, for example, would endanger the orientation of Japan towards the free community; the loss of South Viet-Nam or Thailand would endanger the whole Southeast Asian position and place in jeopardy the independence of the Indian peninsula itself. The independence of the Indian peninsula is, like that of Japan, fundamental to the interest in the balance of power in Eurasia. The definitive loss of Iran would endanger the whole Middle East. In Laos and Afghanistan, where Communist influence has gained a substantial but not definitive hold, our object is to maintain buffer states where the influence of the Communist Bloc and the free community are, at least, in tolerable balance. The definitive loss of Afghanistan would severely increase pressure on both the Indian peninsula and Iran; the definitive loss of Laos would severly increase pressure on Thailand and Southeast Asia in general. Behind the screen of Thailand and South Viet-Nam, the U.S. interest is satisfied if Cambodia, Malaya, Burma, and Indonesia maintain their independence without formal military alliance. All these interests are threatened not only by Communist pressures but also by intra-regional disputes, particularly the Kashmir dispute, the Pushtunistan quarrel, and the differences between India and Nepal, which absorb the resources of the countries concerned, twist or thwart efforts to build up common defenses against Communism, undermine programs for economic development, and carry the possibility of violence which could upset stability in the region.

Our general objective is to maintain the independence of the states in the region: reduce the present level of Communist influence; mitigate disputes between states of the region; and to assist, as opportunity may offer, in bringing these peripheral nations into closer association with each other and the free community as a whole. This objective, in turn, requires the maintenance both of our position in the Western Pacific and of existing military pacts and relationships which provide bases and a legal commitment of the U.S. to the defense of the area.

c. The Middle East. The common border with the USSR and its year-round access to the sea give Iran a position of particular importance; its political, economic and military ties with the U.S. and Western Europe must be strengthened if this can be done without generating counter-productive local reactions. So long as Iran is held, the U.S. interest in the Middle East is that the nations of the region maintain their independence; reduce the present degree of Communist influence; develop along the lines suggested in Part Two: and avoid intra-regional struggles disruptive of the free community and capable of Communist exploitation.

d. Africa. As in the case of Middle Eastern nations which do not have a common border with the Communist Bloc, the U.S. interest in Africa is that the newly emerging nations maintain their independence: reduce the present degree of Communist influence: develop along lines suggested in Part Two: and avoid intraregional struggles disruptive to the free community and capable of Communist exploitation.

8. The Problems of Priority. Western Europe evidently has a role of unique importance in U.S. foreign policy. Its uniqueness derives from multiple considerations: it is decisive to the balance of power and we are committed to defend the area on virtually the same terms as the U.S. itself; European resources are essential to the tasks of defense and construction throughout the free community; European political and trade policies will be an important determinant of whether, in fact, an increasingly coherent free community can be created. Beyond these technical factors, the broadly common ideological heritage of Western Europe and the United States is the ultimate foundation for the values of the free community itself. The maintenance of the integrity of the Western European nations and the transatlantic connection are fundamental.

The special importance of Western Europe (as well as, in different ways, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand), immediately raises the question of whether the interests of the more advanced and less advanced nations of the free community are mutually compatible and of the U.S. interest when clashes arise.

Although the interests of the two main sectors of the free community clash at a variety of points, the more developed areas, whether they acknowledge the fact in their current policy or not, share with the less developed areas certain basic interests: (i) that the inevitable end of the colonial era be brought about as peacefully as possible and in a manner which minimizes the possibilities of Communist exploitation; (ii) that the less developed areas generate regular economic growth patterned in ways which lead to enlarging and mutually advantageous trade with the free community; and (iii) that the Communist strategy of out-flanking and isolating the more advanced areas of the free community, by progressive inroads in the less developed regions, be defeated.

With respect to specific issues where conflict within the free community might require choice or clear-cut priority, the U.S. interest will generally lead us either to support the views of the more developed nations or to pursue a firm national course with respect to such critical military and security issues as: U.S. military policy; arms control and disarmament policy; NATO; and Germany.

With respect to residual colonial issues the U.S. interest will generally lead us to support an ending of colonial ties, but continuing ties between the liberated colony and metropole, while seeking to fashion means for the transition which will minimize frictions and opportunities for Communist exploitation.

Where marginal conflicts of interest within the free community arise over economic assistance or trade policy, the relative poverty of the less developed nations—and the larger communal interest in their rapid economic growth—will generally make it the U.S. interest to favor the interests of the less developed nations.

In the case of regional security issues—such as Communist pressure in Southeast Asia and the Caribbean—it will generally be the U.S. interest to favor those who feel that pressure most directly, while maintaining independence of judgment on appropriate courses of action in the light of our total interests and responsibilities.

These priorities flow from the basic fact that at the present stage of the free community’s development the U.S. is the only true world power. Our ability to influence the course of events is limited, but it extends, in differing degree, into every region. In this sense our role of leadership in building, unifying, and protecting the community is unique. The implications of these basic propositions on the focus of U.S. priorities are elaborated in policy prescriptions which run through Part Two of this paper.

E. The Confrontation with Communism

9. The Appeal to the Communist World. If we hold out to the world the vision of a free community—and grip the real problems of our environment with the techniques it decrees—its appeal will transcend the present non-Communist world. The concepts of independent nationhood, of national interest, and of national culture are living and corrosive forces within the Communist Bloc. The prospect of association with a community committed to respect these concepts should, even in the short run, further loosen the ties that now bind to the USSR the countries of the Communist Bloc. In the long run—in a context where Communism is denied the possibility of expansion and where time and material progress work their mellowing effects—there is a decent hope that changes might be induced in at least some of the Bloc states which would make it possible for them to move towards or even to adhere to the free community; for, if Communism is part of the environment we confront, the secure strength, progress, and national independence of a coalescing community of free nations will inescapably be part of the environment which surround the Communist world. The implications of this perspective for relations with Communist states are examined in Part Two, Chapter IV.

F. The National Base

10. The Prerequisites of Foreign Policy. All these policies require, for their effective execution, a firm base at home: an understanding of what we must do and a will to do it rooted in a substantial political majority of our people; domestic progress which carries forward the ambitions and hopes of our people; an economy capable of providing the resources for both our domestic and security requirements; a balance of payments position which does not constrain our efforts at home and abroad. The means for maintaining such a national base are considered in Part Two, Chapter V.

G. The Five Dimensions of a National Strategy

11. The Development of Policy. In the light of the working goal of the national strategy and the foreseeable setting within which it must be pursued, developed in Chapter I, we turn to a more detailed discussion of the five major dimensions of national strategy suggested above:

—Military Policy.

—Policy in the Underdeveloped Areas.

—The Framework of Organization.

—Policy Toward the Communist States.

—The National Base.

PART TWO: A STRATEGY

I. Military Policy

A. The Role of U.S. Force

1. Force and policy. The positive and constructive objectives of national policy depend intimately and in a variety of ways on the existence of appropriate U.S. forces and the evident will to use them to protect vital interests of the free community. Now and for the foreseeable future U.S. military policy is a crucial determinant of the fate of the free community because our military strength is proportionately great in relation to our population and command over resources, and because the security of our allies is intimately dependent on our strength and will to exercise it. There is hardly a diplomatic relationship we conduct that is not colored by an assessment of U.S. military power and of the circumstances in which we are likely to bring it into play. In generating this power the motivation of men in the expert employment of weapons of war continues as a responsibility of the population at large. It is brought to and maintained at a fine edge of effectiveness by the nation’s military services, which provide a basic source of leadership for present and future generations of military men.

2. Major Missions. To sustain the free community, U.S. forces have four major missions:

a. To deter or deal with a direct nuclear assault against the U.S. or other vital areas.

b. To supplement allied and friendly forces in deterring or countering Communist non-nuclear attacks on the free community or in sea areas or on lines of communication vital to its survival.

c. To support friendly peoples against Communist or Communist-inspired efforts to undermine their governments and fragment their societies through subversive, paramilitary and guerrilla operations.

d. In the event of war to conduct hostilities so as to minimize damage to the U.S. and its allies, preserve their interests, frustrate opposing military forces, and bring about a conclusion of hostilities on terms acceptable to the U.S. and its allies. It is in the interest of the United States to achieve its wartime objectives while limiting the destructiveness of warfare, whether it be non-nuclear or nuclear, local or global; in this sense, it is a goal of U.S. policy that any war be a limited war.

For all these missions it should be recognized that effective deterrence has as its basis the evident military capability to prevent a potential enemy from achieving greater gain than loss by using force. While many other factors contribute to deterrence, this requirement for such a capability is constant and must be satisfied.

3. Supplementary Tasks. U.S. forces have three other important missions:

a. To provide within the free community a sense of security against Communist incursions and Communist political and psychological pressures, including threats of nuclear or non-nuclear attack against the U.S. or its allies.

b. To support American diplomatic and other efforts to minimize conflicts within the free community, to work toward peaceful adjustment of disputes and differences, and otherwise to promote U.S. and free world objectives.

c. To contribute, both directly and through military assistance and training programs, to the constructive modernization of underdeveloped nations.

4. The Special Imperatives of a Nuclear-Missile Age. The nature and consequences of nuclear war conducted with present and foreseeable delivery vehicles call for a military policy which can accomplish the purposes indicated above with a minimum likelihood that we would have to initiate the use of nuclear weapons in order to defend vital interests and, more generally, with a minimum risk of escalation toward general nuclear war.

The number of U.S. casualties and the scale of U.S. civil damage consequent on a major nuclear exchange is already great. It will increase with the passage of time.

The population of our European Allies is even more exposed.

These facts heighten the requirement for a policy aimed at limiting civil damage in the event of a major nuclear war; for generating, so far as possible, adequate non-nuclear defense alternatives; for maintaining—both to deter attack, to influence enemy targeting and to conduct operations—strong flexible, survivable and controlled strategic nuclear forces; and for seeking effectively inspected measures of arms control which would limit mutual powers of destruction while not reducing the free community’s relative capacity to deter or to deal with Communist attack.

B. The Objective: A Stable International Military Environment

5. Objectives of U.S. Military Policy. The fundamental objective of U.S. military policy which flows from these considerations is to create a military environment which will permit us to:

a. achieve maximum deterrence of deliberate aggression, and especially aggression with nuclear weapons.

b. minimize the likelihood of uncalculated, unpremeditated or unintended nuclear conflicts; to reduce the likelihood of accidents, misinterpretations of incidents or intentions, false alarms or unauthorized actions within any nation (including the U.S. or its allies); and to reduce the possibility that such actions might trigger major nuclear war.

c. deal successfully with aggression in ways which will not readily escalate and, especially, which will not deteriorate into general war under the pressure of crises and limited conflicts.

6. The Prospects for Stability. With care and prudence we may thus hope to create an environment which will reduce both the incentives of others to use force in international affairs and the instabilities inherent in an age of nuclear and missile armaments. The rest of this chapter examines the implications of this objective for the design and employment of major elements of U.S. military power: strategic forces; defensive forces; general purpose forces; and anti-guerrilla forces. It also examines arms control and disarmament policy as an integral part of national security policy.

C. The Threat

7. Communist Strategy. A persistent characteristic of Communist military strategy has been its searching attention to specific gaps—regional and technical—in the defense of the free community. It has been, thus far, an evident purpose of Communist strategy to avoid a direct confrontation not only with U.S. main strength, but with positions of relative strength within the free community of other nations as well. Soviet policy appears to be based on pressure against particular areas of vulnerability (e.g., Northern Azerbaijan, Greece, Berlin, Indochina, South Korea, etc.) and particular types of vulnerability (e.g., the geographical position of Berlin, the inadequate defenses against subversion and guerrilla warfare in Laos and South Viet-Nam, etc.)

8. Future Threats. Given foreseeable U.S. nuclear capabilities, including, in particular, our powerful ability to strike second, it is estimated that the USSR will not deliberately take actions which would bring about general nuclear war. There is, nevertheless, always a possibility that the Soviets may miscalculate U.S. capabilities or misjudge U.S. intentions. They may calculate that their growing nuclear strength makes non-nuclear aggression, especially against areas believed to be not vital to U.S. interests, a feasible course of action. They may also under-estimate the importance attached by the U.S. to particular interests or areas, and initiate action in the belief that the U.S. will not respond. Accordingly, it is a first charge on U.S. military policy to make grossly unattractive and unprofitable a direct Soviet assault on the U.S. or on other vital areas, notably Western Europe. But a major lesson of postwar history is that U.S. and allied policy must also achieve, to the maximum degree possible, a closing off of all areas of vulnerability, if we wish to minimize the number and effectiveness of Communist probes. It is this lesson which calls for the U.S. and its allies to develop a fuller range of military capabilities, capable of covering as much as feasible of the free community, if they are to create a stable overall military environment.

The major gap in the U.S. and allied spectrum of capabilities lies at the non-nuclear end—both with respect to conventional forces and those whose mission is counterinsurgency. Although the military stance of the free community is basically defensive, the U.S. and its allies also require capabilities for limited overt and covert action in areas under Communist control. Such action must be carefully weighed in the light of particular circumstances, costs, and risks; but the U.S. cannot accept an asymmetry which allows Communist probes into the free community without possibility of riposte.

D. Strategic Forces

9. Scale and Character of Strategic Nuclear Forces. Attainment of a stable military environment requires strategic nuclear forces sufficiently effective so that Sino-Soviet leaders would expect—without question—the Bloc’s present power position to be worsened drastically as a result of a general nuclear war. In assessing the appropriate scale of a U.S. effort designed to meet this requirement it should be borne in mind that the Soviet calculus must take into account not merely relative Soviet strength after a nuclear exchange but also its consequences for the Communist position in Eastern Europe, for the relative power of Communist China, and for the possibilities of maintaining Communist control over the Russian base.

To meet the objectives indicated above the U.S. should, for the relevant planning period through the mid-1960’s, maintain a sophisticated mix of delivery vehicles so dispersed, hardened, mobile and controlled that:

a. the USSR could not count with confidence, despite any technological break-through it might reasonably expect to score, upon neutralizing or blunting a large proportion of U.S. retaliatory power;

b. the U.S. could, even under unfavorable circumstances (e.g., an initial Soviet surprise attack), substantially reduce the military capabilities of the enemy.

To achieve not only the objectives indicated above, but also greater stability in the international military environment, our U.S. strategic forces and plans for their use should be designed so that they will constitute an element of stability in grave international crises. Thus, our strategic nuclear forces should be sufficiently invulnerable so that their survival and effectiveness need not rest (i) on the U.S. striking first; (ii) on the U.S. taking in a crisis such “crash measures” to reduce these forces’ vulnerability as the Soviets might consider evidence of impending attack or as would materially reduce the forces’ operational effectiveness; (iii) on an instant U.S. response to ambiguous evidence of impending enemy attack.

10. Presidential Control. The planning and design of U.S. strategic forces should offer an increasingly wide range of options, at alternative levels of violence and against alternative target systems, which the President or authorities pre-designated by him could review in advance and choose among in the event. Our strategic forces must increasingly be susceptible of discriminating and controlled use, under centralized military command, in accordance with such high level decisions. Highly survivable command, control, and communication systems should be developed and maintained (i) which provide for authorization by the President, or authorities pre-designated by him in case he is unable to function, of initial use of nuclear weapons under all circumstances, especially including periods of great tension or hostilities; (ii) which ensure, insofar as feasible, that conduct and termination of operations are also continuously and sensitively responsive to political decisions by the President or authorities pre-designated by him. The expectations of individuals about the occasions on which nuclear weapons would be used, and the methods of using them, should not be allowed to narrow to the point that flexibility in execution is in any way reduced.

11. General war may come about in a variety of ways (through pre-meditated attack, preemption, escalation, or inadvertence) and may take different forms, dependent upon the time when it occurs, the accuracy of U.S. intelligence estimates, the kinds of targets the enemy chooses to attack, and the capabilities of the U.S. to prevent repetitive or follow-up strikes. To fix in advance a specific pattern for the conduct of operations is virtually impossible, and our targeting plans and command-control system must, as has been indicated, be designed so as to enable the direction of operations by the President and authorities designated by him before or during the conflict. Within these limitations, pre-attack strategic nuclear planning and preparations will be aimed at:

a. reducing the strategic nuclear offensive capabilities of the enemy, and particularly his ability to mount repetitive attacks against U.S. and Allied population centers.

b. retaining ready, survivable strategic nuclear forces under centralized control for possible selective use against his urban-industrial centers; against other major elements of enemy strength; and for use in other ways which will contribute to c, below.

c. facilitating the conduct of negotiations designed to bring the war to an end on terms which are consistent with U.S. interests, as set forth in this paper.

The prospect of confronting reserve U.S. nuclear forces after any attack may give a potential enemy powerful incentive to refrain from planning or executing unrestricted attacks on U.S. or Allied civil society. Such ready forces, held in reserve and threatening—by their very existence—surviving enemy targets, may also conceivably extend deterrence into the wartime period, and thus destroy the will of surviving enemy leaders to pursue unrestricted attacks or to continue the war. Moreover, the goal of ending hostilities on acceptable terms requires that plans and operational decisions preclude the prospect of an unarmed U.S. confronting armed opponents. For all these reasons, it is essential—whatever the size, composition and effectiveness of U.S. strategic forces—that the U.S. not disarm itself, by expending all ready strategic nuclear forces in initial attacks.

12. Optimum Use of Strategic Nuclear Weapons. A major problem in connection with the design and use of these strategic forces relates to the optimum use of nuclear weapons if we must initiate such use.

On the one hand, since 1945 American policy has ruled out the initiation of nuclear attack on the Soviet Union as a means of bringing the cold war to an end and providing a definite victory for the Free World. Aside from its violation of our moral and political tradition a policy of initiating nuclear war was always shadowed by its consequences for Western Europe; and its rationality on strictly military grounds has been gradually reduced with the Soviet acquisition of medium and long-range nuclear delivery capabilities.

On the other hand, we are committed explicitly to defend the populations and territory of Western Europe, and we have similar though implicit commitments to use nuclear weapons rather than accept major defeat in Asia and the Middle East.

This situation immediately raises the question of whether, if we initiated use of nuclear weapons, a limited use of nuclear weapons with a concomitant risk of escalation of nuclear engagement by the other side would be the sensible course to follow, or whether an initial strike against Soviet strategic nuclear delivery systems would be the optimum course.

At the present time this question—involving complex problems of intelligence assessment and projection as well as evolving military technology—is subject to legitimate debate. The answer may well vary according to circumstances which cannot be foreseen in advance.

13. Current Policy. In order not to foreclose this issue of optimum initial U.S. use of nuclear weapons, it is important to preserve utmost flexibility in our plans and posture. Three propositions warrant special comment in this connection.

a. We should try to convey to the Soviets: (i) That we do not intend to mount an initial strategic strike if their forces do not transgress the frontiers of the free community; (ii) that if they do we would strike first under certain circumstances if this was necessary in order to protect our vital interests; (iii) that we are not so prone to mount an initial strategic strike in the event of grave crises or limited conflict as to maximize the incentive for the Soviets to take a pre-emptive action in these contingencies. This is, in effect, the manifold message we have conveyed with respect to West Berlin.

b. We must not lock ourselves into plans and assumptions regarding an initial U.S. strategic strike against Soviet nuclear delivery systems, which could play somewhat the same role in a major international crisis that the great powers’ mobilization and war plans played in 1914, e.g., create such pressures for early military moves, in order to destroy enemy nuclear forces, as to deny diplomacy the time it needs to resolve the crisis peacefully.

c. We have not and should not set an absolute requirement that our strategic forces be able substantially to destroy all Soviet nuclear delivery systems in a first strike. For one thing, such an objective does not appear practical.

E. Active and Passive Defense

14. Active Defense. The prime objectives of active defense systems are to improve stability by:

a. helping to protect U.S. retaliatory forces;

b. preventing the enemy from cheaply and easily wreaking devastation on U.S. population and industrial centers;

c. accomplishing maximum attrition of the attacking force and complicating enemy planning.

Attainment of the second of these objectives will present increasing difficulty as the USSR develops more sophisticated weapons systems; hence, the actual level of resources to be devoted to this mission should be reconsidered frequently and thoroughly.

15. Passive Defense. Passive defense measures will not preclude the USSR from inflicting heavy damage on the U.S. should it wish to do so. If it were the primary enemy purpose to overcome passive defense measures, there are numerous weapons options available to him. A more reasonable assumption, however, is that the allocation of resources to long-term and costly development of inter-continental weapons systems would not be significantly affected by U.S. measures of passive defense designed to reduce loss of life from nuclear attack. In the light of the various circumstances under which hostilities might be conducted, passive defense has three main purposes:

a. To prevent or limit avoidable fatalities or casualties from nuclear conflict not involving massive attack directly upon U.S. population centers. This purpose can be separated into two parts: the first, limitation of casualties and fatalities from blast, heat and other immediate effects of nuclear detonations; the second, limitation of casualties and fatalities from fallout, spreading fires and other indirect effects of nuclear detonations. The first can be accomplished only through a combination of active and passive defense measures; systems to accomplish this on a nation-wide basis are not yet sufficiently efficient to warrant their adoption. The second can be attained by a system of fallout shelters, together with local organization, planning and training to use the system.

b. To maintain continuity at all feasible levels of government. This will require particular attention to such tasks as establishing and promulgating lines of succession to official positions; providing for the safekeeping of essential records; establishing control centers and alternative sites for government emergency operations; and providing for the protection and maximum use of essential government personnel, resources and facilities.

c. To strengthen, mobilize and plan for the management of the nation’s resources in the interest of current and future national security. In this connection, continuing attention must be given to planning, training, stockpiling, research and development, and other preparations necessary to: (i) the stabilization and organized direction of the civilian economy in times of national emergency; (ii) the prompt initiation of post-attack industrial rehabilitation programs necessary to national survival, rehabilitation and recovery; and (iii) the proper organization of remaining human and material resources.

These passive defense steps are essential, lest the U.S. socio-economic system collapse or be distorted into an unacceptable form even following an attack of limited scale not directed primarily against our civil society. Sustained effort and public education by the Federal Government will be required for their execution. Care should be taken, however, not to generate unwarranted expectations as to what such programs can accomplish, not to allow these measures to divert public attention and energies from other needed national security tasks.

F. General Purpose Forces

16. Scale and Nature. A third major element in our effort to achieve a balanced and stable international military environment should be the maintenance of U.S. and allied general purpose forces adequate, not only to accomplish prescribed general war tasks but also, in situations less than general war, to use force within certain limits to defend allied and friendly peoples and areas without taking actions involving a high probability of nuclear war.

In determining the scale of U.S. non-nuclear forces needed to meet this requirement, three conceivable types of Sino-Soviet ground-air non-nuclear attack should be considered: (i) major assault, based on full use of forces in being which are deployed or readily deployable to the area under attack; (ii) lesser forms of aggression, at any level up to major assault; (iii) all-out assault, based on full mobilization and use of all manpower and material reserves.

U.S. general purposes forces should be strong enough in combination with available allied forces:

(i) to frustrate, without using nuclear weapons, major non-nuclear assault by Sino-Soviet forces against areas where vital U.S. interests are involved, long enough—at a minimum²—to give the Communists a full opportunity to appreciate the risks of the course on which they are embarked and then to afford diplomacy an adequate opportunity to end the conflict;

(ii) to frustrate in sustained combat, without using nuclear weapons and without any time limit, non-nuclear aggression at any level less than major assault by Soviet or Chinese Communist ground and air forces;

(iii) to contribute to general war missions in the event of all-out Sino-Soviet attack, so long as this does not significantly interfere with or detract from the general purpose forces’ primary missions, which are to deter and deal with conflicts less than general war.

In addition, general purpose forces should be able to maintain, without using nuclear weapons, control of required sea bases and sea-areas in the face of non-nuclear naval and air attack against such sea lanes and sea areas.

General purpose forces should be increased in quantity and improved in quality (e.g., through modernization of material stocks) as necessary to attain the above objectives. In so doing, account should be taken of the fact that, although the reserve call-up of 1961 was under the then existing circumstances an essential military and political act, we cannot assume the threats we will face will be so infrequent, dramatic, and unambiguous as to make recurring reserve call-ups (except as indicated in paragraph 23) a politically feasible or technically desirable means of meeting the objectives outlined above.

U.S. general purpose forces should also be:

a. Sufficiently mobile so that they could respond promptly and simultaneously in needed numbers to two substantial threats in areas where such threats can reasonably be expected and where they would directly threaten vital U.S. interests—notably in Europe and Southeast Asia.

b. So trained, organized, and equipped as not in any way to be dependent on nuclear weapons in such sustained combat as may be necessary fully to discharge the missions prescribed under (i) and (ii), above, in regard to major Communist assault and lesser aggressions.

c. Afforded sufficient logistic support (including advance construction and pre-stocking, where feasible, of needed facilities in or near possible overseas combat areas) to permit discharge of the missions indicated above.

A longer term, but clearly desirable, objective of U.S. policy would be to create U.S. general purpose forces sufficiently substantial so that they could frustrate, in conjunction with available allied forces and by non-nuclear means, major Sino-Soviet non-nuclear assault against a maximum number of those areas involving vital U.S. interests, without any time limit. Prompt consideration should be given to the question of whether steps additional to those called for in the preceding paragraphs should eventually be taken to achieve this objective, in respect of both U.S. and allied forces. The resources available to the U.S. and its allies in manpower, financial and production terms place this objective within our capabilities. Action to achieve the objective, however, would require difficult political decisions for the people of both the U.S. and its allies. New approaches to this problem should be studied intensively.

The possibility should be examined that, even with an increase in free world non-nuclear strength within likely limits, U.S. and allied forces might not be able to frustrate major non-nuclear assault in some regions without (or, in the event the opponent were to respond in kind, even with) local use of nuclear weapons, so that the threat of U.S. initial use of strategic nuclear weapons would remain essential to deterring attack on these areas. The political and military implications of any such conclusion should be the subject of urgent study.

17. Contingency Planning. Within the limits of capabilities which exist or are to be firmly planned in accordance with the policy set forth in paragraph 16, contingency plans should exist for a non-nuclear response by general purpose forces to each likely form of Communist non-nuclear aggression short of all-out attack. Preparations should be such as to permit immediate execution of these plans.

18. Conduct of Local War. In conducting local war the U.S. should:

a. seek to bring the war to a conclusion on terms satisfactory to the U.S., and make clear to the enemy the specific political objectives for which the U.S. is fighting where this will contribute to doing so;

b. be prepared to fight locally in direct conflict with Sino-Soviet forces;

c. protect the interests of the friendly people involved;

d. seek to control the scope and intensity of the conflict to minimize the risk of escalation to general war, recognizing that this may sometimes require controlled and deliberate intensification of the conflict;

e. conduct military operations so as to limit damage in the area of conflict and enhance allied solidarity and effectiveness.

19. Deployment and Use of Tactical Nuclear Weapons. We can no longer expect to avoid nuclear retaliation if we initiate the use of nuclear weapons, tactically or otherwise. Even a local nuclear exchange could have consequences, for example, for Europe that are most painful to contemplate. Such an exchange would be unlikely to give us any marked military advantage. It could rapidly lead to general nuclear war.

A very limited use of nuclear weapons, primarily for purposes of demonstrating our will and intent to use such weapons, might bring Soviet aggression to a halt without substantial retaliation, and without escalation. This is a next-to-last option we cannot dismiss. But prospects for success are not high, and there might be acutely undesirable political consequences from taking such action.

It is also conceivable that the limited tactical use of nuclear weapons on the battlefield would not broaden a conventional engagement or radically transform it. But these prospects are not rated very highly.

Highly dispersed nuclear weapons in the hands of troops would be difficult to control centrally. Accidents and unauthorized acts could well occur on both sides. Furthermore, the pressures on the Soviets to respond in kind, the great flexibility of nuclear systems, the enormous firepower contained in a single weapon, the case and accuracy with which that firepower can be called in from unattacked and hence undamaged distant bases, the crucial importance of air superiority in nuclear operations—all these considerations suggest that local nuclear war would be a transient but highly destructive phenomenon.

Studies of the use of nuclear weapons, either for battlefield or interdiction purposes, are under way and should be urgently prosecuted. Pending the completion of these studies, tentative guidelines are:

a. Scale and Nature: U.S. forces should have sufficient tactical nuclear capabilities (i) to deter enemy initiation of tactical nuclear warfare; (ii) to enhance (in conjunction with a manifest U.S. intent to use nuclear weapons, if necessary) the primary deterrent, which is and will continue to be, posed by U.S. non-nuclear and strategic nuclear capabilities, to major or all-out Communist non-nuclear assault; (iii) to be able to use tactical nuclear weapons selectively for military advantage, if circumstances should arise (e.g., at sea or in the air) where we would gain militarily from a local nuclear exchange and where such an exchange would be unlikely to cause escalation; (iv) to permit a very limited use against valid military targets in other circumstances, primarily in order to demonstrate our will to resist aggression.

b. Organization and Deployment: U.S. and allied tactical nuclear capabilities should be so deployed, and their command and control should be so organized as; (i) to preserve carefully the distinction between nuclear and non-nuclear weapons; (ii) to ensure that initial use of tactical nuclear weapons—even after non-nuclear hostilities have begun—will take place only on the President’s decision; (iii) to ensure that continuing control will be exercised over use of tactical nuclear weapons, within limitations established by the President, at as high a level of authority as is consistent with the character of the conflict and the likely grave consequences of a nuclear mistake. In order to accomplish the purposes indicated above and ensure that nuclear weapons are as immune to accidental or deliberate unauthorized use as consistent with their operational effectiveness: (i) High priority should be given to incorporating, as a matter of urgency, all needed and operationally feasible technical safeguards in nuclear weapons specified by the President, in allied and in U.S. hands; (ii) U.S. custodians of warheads in allied hands should be given the training, equipment, and orders necessary to destroy these warheads quickly, and without the cooperation of the host country, if this should prove necessary to prevent unauthorized use; (iii) Periodic review of these arrangements and safeguards and of the state, command and control, organization, and deployment of U.S. and allied nuclear weapons and of their nuclear components should be undertaken to ensure that they are the optimum from the standpoints indicated above.

c. Use: Tactical nuclear weapons should be used in local war only when it is clear that the objectives stated in paragraph 18 would be furthered by, and could not be attained without, use of nuclear weapons. In determining whether this condition exists and, if so, how nuclear weapons should be used, account should be taken of: (i) our ability or inability to frustrate the aggression without using nuclear weapons; (ii) the likely military effects of a local two-way nuclear exchange; (iii) the political effects of such a local nuclear exchange—both locally and worldwide; (iv) the physical effects of the exchange for the country being fought over; (v) the chances of the exchange escalating into general nuclear war.

G. Counter-Guerrilla Forces

20. The Task. A fourth major element in a stable military environment must be the generation of allied and U.S. forces and policies capable of making the imposition of guerrilla war on nations of the free community unprofitable to the Communists. Given the preponderant role of local forces in deterring guerrilla war and conducting counter-guerrilla operations it follows that:

a. Preventive Action: Special steps should be taken to make vulnerable nations more aware of Communist tactics in this field and of the civil and military conditions in the free community which make such tactics feasible and attractive. Recognizing the importance of non-military factors in this connection, emphasis should be placed on devising and implementing economic and political—as well as military—programs aimed at preventing situations that could lead to guerrilla warfare. We must identify such areas of potential or current vulnerability in advance; focus the attention of foreign governments and our own instruments of policy on preventive action; and generate the local and U.S. forces, civil and military, capable of dealing with them in the most forehanded way possible.

b. Crisis Situations: When guerrilla conflict erupts we should seek to mobilize effective local defense, supported by necessary political and economic programs, at the earliest possible stage of the conflict. Our objectives, where appropriate and feasible, should be to: (i) maintain the independence and territorial integrity of the nation attacked; (ii) minimize the scope of direct U.S. involvement, so far as consistent with this objective and our commitments; (iii) minimize the risk of escalation to local conventional or to nuclear war.

c. U.S. Programs: The development of hardware, techniques, and tactics appropriate to guerrilla warfare should receive high priority in U.S. training and production programs, as necessary to achieve the purposes set forth under (a) and (b) above.

21. The Border Problem in Guerrilla Warfare. Although main reliance is placed on local dissidents or converts to Communism by guerrilla forces, the conduct by the Communists of guerrilla war sometimes involves the infiltration from outside of key personnel and material, as well as external inspiration and stimulation of the operation. Since it may, therefore, be difficult to conduct successful counter-guerrilla operations where an open frontier with a Communist country exists:

a. The U.S. should heighten the free community’s awareness of the element of international aggression involved in outside support for guerrilla operations, so as to deter border crossings and other forms of support, and to provide a basis for possible sanctions.

b. The U.S. should seek to close off open frontiers or to control the flow of supplies from outside the country—a move in which an international presence may sometimes be helpful, although experience to date is not encouraging on this point.

c. The U.S. should consider the application of selected, measured sanctions against the aggressor, if necessary to prevent the defeat of the free community nation under attack, in ways which would minimize—but nevertheless confront—the possibility of escalation.

22. The Role of Allies. With respect to allied participation in the deterrence and conduct of guerrilla war, it is U.S. policy:

a. To generate local forces—through formal alliance arrangements or otherwise—which will deter guerrilla warfare, if possible, and provide time for the mobilization of effective countermeasures, should deterrence fail.

b. To rally diplomatic, civic and military support for the nation under attack from the maximum number of nations of the free community, taking into account, with respect to civic and military contributions, the relative political acceptability, in particular regions, of the presence of various of our allies.

H. Other Missions of U.S. Forces

23. Subsidiary Tasks. The subsidiary missions assigned the armed forces (see paragraph A, 3 above) impose only minor additional specialized military requirements, but these must be given particular attention lest they be lost to sight. The accomplishment of these missions depends on a mutual awareness among civilian and military officials of the particular contributions of armed forces can make, and a willingness to offer and to accept those contributions. This in turn implies an even better reciprocal flow of information, closer liaison, and more cross-education than has sometimes been achieved in the past. U.S. military forces at home and abroad, because of their size, geographical distribution, and versatile nonmilitary capabilities continue to have great impact in various countries and exert strong influence on all of our political, economic, and psychological policies. This influence should be used to our advantage.

I. Supporting Programs. The following programs provide support for all the types of U.S. forces and missions described in this chapter.

24. Reserve Forces. With due regard for political and psychological difficulties, the training, equipment, and orientation of reserve forces should be altered to fit them better for:

a. Manning active defense systems.

b. Augmenting active forces in contingencies which require rapid but limited mobilization.

c. Providing reinforcements in the event of protracted local conflicts.

d. Fulfilling a significant supporting role as a secondary mission in civil defense, when civil defense plans and concepts have developed to the point where specific useful missions can be assigned to reserve units.

e. Providing additional forces and expanded base for large scale mobilization in major emergencies.

f. Provision of units to augment or replenish the strategic reserve in the CONUS.

While selected high priority units should be readied to augment or replenish the strategic reserve in the continental U.S. reserve call-ups should so far as practicable be limited to organized units and individuals with the least prior service.

25. Overseas Bases and Facilities. Although the development of ballistic missile technology has reduced the need for strategic air and missile bases overseas, the possibility of U.S. engagement in local wars or in anti-guerrilla operations creates a new need for tactical bases, overflight rights, and contingency arrangements. Moreover, requirements for peace-time storage, communications, tracking, and intelligence facilities are increasing.

To meet vital needs the U.S. should maintain an adequate system of overseas facilities for local war, military counter-insurgency operations, general war, and peacetime missions, together with the arrangements necessary for their support.

This base structure must be clearly and fully capable of supporting U.S. and allied forces in their preparation for, and conduct of, local war, wherever such war may occur throughout the world. Where local logistic limitations exist which would not prevent optimum deployment of U.S. and allied forces to a country which we would propose to defend in local war, prompt and vigorous remedial action should be taken, e.g., building more transport and other facilities in the host country or pre-stocking existing facilities in or near that country.

We should seek to limit dependence on a single base, or a group of bases, and should examine with urgency, in view of the growing nationalist and neutralist pressure on existing U.S. bases, the possibilities of maintaining services essential to U.S. security by acquiring new bases, and by developing new or applying existing technologies, which would reduce our dependence on overseas bases in general. Given the increasing diplomatic and political cost of maintaining base and facility rights overseas, and the pressure that maintenance of such bases and facilities exerts on our balance of payments position, we should make every effort to dispose in whole or in part of outmoded or unnecessary facilities, to hold new requirements to a minimum and, where needed, to secure additional rights to use existing foreign military and civil facilities.

26. Military Aid. This is dealt with in Chapter Two, following.

27. Research and Development. To maintain effective deterrence over the full spectrum of force, the free community must prosecute research and development efforts over a broad front. The U.S. should pursue research and development to maintain a selective superiority in military technology that is increasingly responsive to our political and military objectives. New emphasis should be given to research and development in two fields which have enjoyed less attention than their importance warrants:

a. We should give high priority to weapons and equipment designed to improve our capabilities in sustained non-nuclear combat. We should support mutually with certain allies selected non-nuclear research and development for military application in improving such non-nuclear capabilities.

b. We should give new emphasis to weapons which will help less developed countries cope with guerrilla and local external threats.

To these ends, continuing efforts should be devoted to promoting basic scientific research (both within the military and the civilian agencies of government), to uncovering and applying technological discoveries and innovations, (using both governmental and private research and development facilities), and to expediting their translation into military equipment. However, the wide range of possible improvements, the cost of changing models and making adaptations, and the nation’s over-all requirement for scarce research and development resources, indicate a need for focussing more sharply on developments of significant import and for eschewing marginal improvements or those which do not remedy basic defects of existing weapons systems.

We should also seek, through research and development, to devise new capabilities for limited countermeasures against Communist pressures short of the overt use of substantial force.

28. Chemical and Biological Warfare. United States military forces should have a capability to use and defend against chemical and biological weapons. Chemical and biological weapons should only be used in case of direct decision by the President that such use is warranted by the political military situation, except for the use of: (1) existing smoke, incendiary, and riot control agents in appropriate military operations, and (2) riot control agents in suppressing civil disturbances.

J. Arms Control and Disarmament

29. The U.S. Interest in Arms Control and Disarmament. The fifth and final element in the effort to maintain a stable military environment is our policy toward arms control and disarmament. The U.S. security interest in arms control and disarmament derives directly from the following characteristics of U.S. military policy and of the present and foreseeable military environment:

a. Continuation of existing trends is likely to yield an increasing number of powers which command nuclear capabilities and means of delivery—on the whole a destabilizing factor, contrary to the U.S. interest.

b. The possibility that a nuclear war might result from accident or—more likely—from miscalculation, misinterpretation of incidents, false alarms or unauthorized actions, or failure of communication is large enough to be an important reason for seeking remedial measures.

c. The prospect over the coming years, in the absence of arms limitation, is for (i) continuing U.S. ability to inflict a high level of damage on the USSR; (ii) substantial increase in the Soviet capacity to inflict civil damage on the U.S. in all-out nuclear exchange; (iii) continuing substantial expenditures of resources and scarce talent in efforts to maintain a stable military environment.

d. Since the U.S. does not intend to initiate nuclear attack on nations ruled by Communist regimes except in riposte to prior Communist aggression, the U.S. cannot exploit the technical advantages of unprovoked, secretly planned, and surprise nuclear assault.

e. A persuasive second-strike deterrent can be maintained at lower levels of U.S. nuclear delivery capabilities than at present, without necessarily jeopardizing U.S. objectives, if we are assured that our own reductions in capabilities are matched appropriately by the USSR.

30. Objectives of U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Policy. In the light of these considerations, U.S. arms control and disarmament policy should form a major element of our national policy and, as such, should seek to complement our military policy in enhancing U.S. security by promoting a stable military environment and developing the means of limiting damage should war occur. To this end the following objectives (which are not necessarily listed in order of priority) should be sought:

a. The U.S. should seek to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons capabilities to nations not now controlling such capabilities.

b. It should seek to reduce the likelihood of hostilities occurring through accident, miscalculation or failure of communication.

c. It should seek to limit the capabilities of enemy states to undertake aggression against the U.S. and its allies, to reduce the risk of war, and to decrease the destructiveness of war should it occur, through substantial safeguarded reductions in armaments and other measures by the major powers, short of general and complete disarmament.

d. It should, as a long-term goal, seek to promote the political and military conditions under which the use or threat of force as an instrument of national policy would be reduced and finally eliminated, through an agreed total program of general and complete disarmament under effective international controls in a world effectively organized for peace.

Each of these four categories of measures is discussed below.

31. Steps to Prevent Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Capabilities. In order to reduce the risk of nuclear proliferation, emphasis should be placed on seeking not only a safeguarded cessation of nuclear testing but also a safeguarded cessation of production of fissionable materials for weapons purposes and an agreement under which nuclear powers would commit themselves not to relinquish control over nuclear weapons to non-nuclear states. An agreement not to disseminate nuclear weapons should be couched in terms that would not call into question either existing NATO custodial arrangements or any contemplated allied multilateral arrangement.

32. Initial Measures to Reduce the Likelihood of Accident, Miscalculation or Failure of Communication. Even if the Soviets do not share the U.S. image of the future of the world in the degree necessary to negotiate major arms reductions programs, they may come to recognize the serious dangers of accident, miscalculation and failure of communication and thus be willing to join the U.S. in limited measures to reduce those dangers. Such measures might include advance notification of military movements, creation of some facility for direct, secure, and instantaneous communication between national military command centers of the two sides, establishment of observation posts and arrangements to reduce the risk of surprise attack, and establishment of an International Commission to Reduce the Risk of War in which the U.S. and the USSR would consider further steps to promote stability, reduce tensions, dampen military crises, and minimize the need for hasty military responses. The U.S. should, even before such a Commission is established, urgently seek out opportunities informally to discuss such measures with the USSR to try to alert it to the importance and nature of the problem.

33. Limited Disarmament Measures.

Limited disarmament measures, though short of general and complete disarmament, might still be substantial and comprehensive. They might include reducing and limiting strategic nuclear delivery capabilities; reducing and limiting conventional armaments and armed forces; and insuring the peaceful uses of outer space. In negotiating limited measures, the U.S. should seek to the maximum possible extent to redress the imbalance in conventional land armaments existing between NATO and the Bloc. Such measures might reduce the risk of war, limit the cost of military programs, and reduce the destructiveness of war, if it occurs.

34. General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World.

The U.S. should continue to evidence its willingness to negotiate a program and a treaty for general and complete disarmament in a peaceful world.

Such a program would involve the reduction and eventual elimination of national military capabilities except those required for maintaining internal order and for an international peace force—to be carried out by balanced, equitable, and safeguarded steps for the concurrent regulation and reduction of both nuclear and non-nuclear armed forces and armaments where appropriate, under effective verification procedures which would be reciprocal or international and would be responsive to the required amount of security dependent on the extent and kind of retained armaments. Parallel to the curtailment of national military power, such a program would promote the growth of more effective means for keeping the peace, including: renunciation of subversion and indirect aggression as instruments of policy, development of the rule of international law, improvement of procedures for settling international disputes, and development of an international peace force capable of effectively protecting all nations against breaches of the peace.

Given Soviet attitudes and policies, general and complete disarmament is unlikely of attainment in the near future. The U.S. should: (a) continue to favor such a policy, while underlining candidly its radical implications for international law and effective peace-keeping machinery; and (b) at the same time seek the more limited and feasible arms control measures set forth above.

35. Evaluation.

In evaluating arms control and disarmament measures primary consideration should, of course, be given to the degree of military risk or military advantage involved. In addition, the following factors should be weighed: the dangers inherent in the continuation of uncontrolled increases in the proliferation of armaments, the possible effect of a proposed measure on the ability of the U.S. to carry out its foreign policy, and its probable effect on over-all Communist policy and on the evolution of the Bloc.

36. Inspection and Verification.

Adequate verification must accompany arms control and disarmament. There should be effective verification of: (i) destruction of armaments or their conversion to peaceful uses; (ii) cessation or limitation of production, testing, or other specified activities; (iii) the fact that agreed levels of armaments and armed forces are not exceeded. A continuing attempt should be made to devise inspection techniques which would fully exploit technological progress, and the degree of inspection should be related to the technical need and the degree of risk to the national security involved. Some arms control measures conceivably may be assured without formal inspection machinery or may be subject to verification through national intelligence collection capabilities.

37. Arms Control and Military Planning.

It is essential that U.S. arms control planning and research be integrated with U.S. military planning. Both are directed toward improving U.S. military security, and they will only achieve this objective if they are carried forward in close concert. On the one hand, in proposing an arms control measure, we must take into account its effect on relative military capabilities and support of national strategy. At the same time, military contingency plans, research and development, and programming of armed forces and armaments should reflect an awareness of the extent to which they affect stability in the military environment, the evolution of weapons and doctrine, and the likelihood of unauthorized use of weapons.

38. Dissemination of Arms Control Knowledge.

The increasing U.S. knowledge and understanding of arms control matters should be disseminated not only to other Western powers but also to the neutrals and to the Soviet Bloc. Informal conferences, consultations, and meetings should be encouraged both within the West and on an East-West basis where we can be assured that U.S. participation will be competent, responsible, and responsive to the national interest.

39. Regional Arms Races in Newly Developing Areas.

The development of regional arms races for purposes of prestige or external adventures should be discouraged where possible. Any opportunity for tacit or explicit agreements to limit such competition should be fully exploited. We should constantly be alert to means for creating or embracing such opportunities.

II. Policy Towards the Underdeveloped Areas

A. The U.S. Interest in the Underdeveloped Areas

1. Direct Interests. It follows directly from the principles and purposes outlined in Part One that the U.S. has three basic interests in the underdeveloped areas of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America:

—A military interest: that they not fall under Communist control and that we maintain within them the minimum essential military arrangements required for our own security and that of the free community as a whole.

—A political interest: that they evolve in directions which will afford a congenial world environment for our own society.

—An economic interest: that the resources and the markets of these areas are available to us and to the other industrialized nations of the free world, on a basis of mutually rewarding and self-respecting trade.

2. The Problems of Change. In addition we have a direct interest that the inevitable processes of change within these regions of the free community take place in as peaceful a manner as possible.

Over the past decade the turbulent forces at work in the underdeveloped areas have been—with the exception of Berlin and the offshore islands—the primary setting for international crisis: Indo-China, Suez, Iraq, Cuba, Algeria, the Congo, Bizerte, Goa, West New Guinea, etc. These crises have been of three kinds, usually in some sort of combination: international crises arising from internal power struggle, reflecting the inevitable domestic political and social strains of modernization; colonial or quasi-colonial conflicts; and Communist efforts to exploit the opportunities offered by these two inherent types of trouble. These crises have distorted relations with our major allies; diverted the free community’s attention and resources from major constructive tasks; created dangerous tensions with the Communist Bloc; and obtruded on the effort to build harmonious relations with the underdeveloped areas themselves.

There is every reason to believe that for the next decade—and probably for the next generation and beyond—the management of the Free World’s affairs with respect to the underdeveloped areas to the South will remain a critical element in national policy, with fundamental consequences for our relations with Europe and Japan, for the conflict with the Communist Bloc, and for the military and political environment of our own society. A high premium attaches to anticipating such crises and dealing with them in ways which minimize the possibility that they yield results contrary to the national interest.

B. The Setting

3. Pressures for Modernization. What is happening in these areas is familiar enough. They are driven forward by powerful impulses both to modernize their way of life—so as to exploit the potentialities of modern technology—and to assume a role of dignity and authority on the world scene. Politically active and literate groups in many countries have awakened to the fact that their lot can be bettered by human effort; and they demand that their nations achieve the status, material base, and human well-being they associate with a modern state.

4. Obstacles. In responding to these impulses they have been obligated to struggle against the habits, institutions, and structures of power inherited from the past; against the breakdown of traditional societies and deep divisions in the new ones; against serious inadequacies in trained administrative and technical personnel; against rapid rates of population increase that threaten to overwhelm such material progress as they can generate; and against economic dependence on the uncertain prosperity of a single export crop.

5. Nationalism. Emerging as many of these nations have from colonial or quasi-colonial status, their political life is shot through with anti-Western sentiments and, often, with a profound sense of racial feeling. They wish to express the new nationalism which dominates their political life by rectifying real or imagined past humiliations and by a new assertiveness in political affairs. Some states seek national satisfaction in the form of regional expansion while others have revived old territorial disputes. Such sentiments and actions compound their problems and raise new barriers to fruitful relations with many developed countries of the West. A growing spirit of nationalism has also emerged in nations which, while independent for many years, are only now breaking up the patterns of traditional social and political power and demanding recognition as modern, independent states.

6. Communist Appeal. Confronted with urgent domestic and external ambitions on the one hand, and intractable domestic problems and external restraints on the other, the literate elites are tempted by the possibility that Communist methods of organization may represent a short cut to economic growth, to personal power, and to enhance national status, as well as by the possibility of using Soviet and Chinese Communist support to hasten the satisfaction of national aspirations abroad. Communism thus presents a pragmatic appeal which reinforces its ideological attractions and makes easier the extension of Bloc influence.

C. The Objective and Assets of U.S. Policy

7. Working Goals. It is in this setting that American policy, directed to the interests set out in Para. A.1, above, must operate. U.S. policy must seek both to encourage a concentration of these countries’ limited political and administrative energies on the constructive tasks of development, and to encourage and constrain them to seek methods of peaceful change in their domestic affairs and international relations. If these goals can be fulfilled, the less developed countries should be increasingly able to maintain their independence in the face of subversion and indirect aggression, and to assume a responsible role as members of the free community.

8. U.S. Assets. In pursuing these objectives against inherent obstacles and Communist appeals and methods, U.S. policy—while necessarily limited in its impact on the evolution of other societies—has three fundamental assets within the fabric of most developing nations:

—By and large the most vital political elements in these nations seek national independence; the subservience that goes with Communist control is increasingly understood; and the authenticity of U.S. support for national independence is emerging with increased clarity.

—Although in many cases there is disillusionment with the possibility of using Western democratic political methods effectively in the short run, there is a widespread commitment to Western norms of political democracy as a long-run goal, and considerable resistance to a definitive acceptance of totalitarianism—a resistance rooted in national cultures, not merely acquired Western political values;

—There is among important and enlarging groups an authentic desire to get on with the tasks of economic and social development, both for their own sake and as an essential basis for national independence.

9. Implications for U.S. Policy. If these assets are to control the pattern of development of the underdeveloped areas, there must be an effective demonstration that the goals of national independence and sustained development are compatible with governments increasingly based on consent and associated in their international relations with the U.S. and the West. This condition, in turn, requires that the U.S. support and align itself systematically with those groups inside the developing nations which are, in fact, prepared to carry forward the acts of self-help and reform on which the process of modernization depends. In a number of areas our short and long-run interests have been in conflict, in that groups which promise to maintain independence against the Communist thrust are committed by their vested interests to oppose measures essential for rapid economic growth and political and social modernization. The resolution of this dilemma (which is a fundamental task of U.S. policy in many parts of the underdeveloped areas) requires that we identify, support, and, if possible, help to unite those elements in the political and administrative structure; in the military; in the commercial, industrial, and professional community; and among the intellectuals, students, and trade unions which are committed to national independence, to economic and social progress, and, within the capacity of each society, to the progressive extension of democratic political practice.

10. The Prospect. The crosscurrents at work within these countries and their inherent instability require that we be prepared to work towards our objectives over very considerable periods of time without achieving cleancut and definitive results. On the other hand, the unformed character of these societies, their turbulence, and their ambitions mean also that it can be difficult for the Communists to effect a definitive takeover. Despite the success of Ho Chi Minh and Castro in capturing for Communism broadly-based popular movements, analogies based on their techniques or on Communist takeovers in Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe after 1945 may not prove generally relevant—particularly if we are alert to the danger. Areas which may appear most unpromising to us in the short-run—and which appear to be dangerously impregnated with Communist and other anti-American influence from without and from within—should not be prematurely written off. An underdeveloped society can wallow in a sea of trouble for longer than we might think without coming effectively under Communist control and discipline. We must be prepared to continue to work towards our objectives with poise and confidence, even under quite unpromising circumstances.

D. The Instruments of United States Policy

11. Available Instruments. To assist constructive modernization, we should vigorously use the array of instruments available to us—including diplomacy, military force, military aid, information activities, exchange programs of all kinds, help in educational and cultural advancement, people-to-people activities, assistance in economic programming, technical assistance, the provision of capital, the use of surpluses, policy towards trade and commodity price stabilization, and a variety of other actions capable of affecting the orientation of men and institutions within these societies towards their problems. Some of these instruments are wholly at the disposal of the U.S. Government, while others can be utilized fully only with the cooperation of private institutions (such as business enterprises, trade unions, universities, etc.) or through influencing and working with international organizations. Each has its own advantages, drawbacks, and side-effects, which may be as significant as their direct impact. Under these circumstances, it is impossible in this paper to do more than set down broad guidelines for their use.

12. Orchestration of Instruments. In view of the variety and complexity of these instruments, it is of crucial importance that they should be closely concerted and coordinated to common ends. A conscious and determined effort should be made to develop and implement for each less developed country, a country plan or system of priorities for the use of these instruments based on:

—A unified and realistic concept of the forces at work within that country and the ways in which these forces can be influenced or motivated, over any period of time.

—A clear understanding of the desired pace and direction of modernization, based on our objectives and on the limits and possibilities set by the particular country’s stage of political, social and economic development.

—A realistic understanding of the possible effect of the various instruments of action available to us in promoting our objectives.

—A system for focusing and orchestrating these instruments so that our limited influence is maximized.

In preparing these programs, the development of the knowledge and the management tools required for this purpose should be a prime charge upon U.S. resources, and needed research should be systematically undertaken to this end.

E. Social and Political Change

13. Social Change. In the process of modernization economic, social, and political changes are interlocked in complex ways which U.S. policy must seek increasingly to understand and to take into account. Although economic change and economic incentives are powerful forces in the total process of modernization, U.S. policy should recognize that success depends decisively on the emergence of politicians, bureaucrats, military leaders, businessmen, trade union officials, and others determined to achieve progress—with all this involves in the way of effort, risk, and innovation—and who are at the same time able to operate effectively within a political system based upon an increasing measure of consent. It should be a prime purpose of U.S. policy to promote that emergence; our economic, cultural, and political programs vis-à-vis less developed countries should be systematically geared to this end. Programs for the exchange of persons and information, on both a bilateral and multilateral basis, should be directed to this goal. Projects and programs to encourage local and foreign private enterprise, properly related to the life and objectives of the host country, should also receive high priority, as a means of serving this purpose. The kinds of assistance in education which are likely to promote the emergence of innovation-minded groups should be pressed. Given the inappropriate character of the educational institutions and values initially built into many underdeveloped nations out of their colonial or traditional past, U.S. educational policy should seek to guide them towards more pragmatic and vocational educational programs and systems, in the spirit of the Morrill Act, which played so important a role in our development at an equivalent stage of our evolution. Measures should be devised which would ensure exposure to appropriate external influence of groups which play a key role in modernization, including the military. These measures might take a variety of forms, ranging from transport to afford tradition-bound rural areas wider contacts with the outside world to programs for making available to businessmen and bureaucrats in the less-developed countries—through travel, reading, and education—some of the skills and the attitudes that will contribute to progress. In all these ways we should seek to promote and enhance the entrepreneurial spirit which is an indispensable component of modernization. It is a practical lesson of our postwar experience that a consensus between ourselves and those who take a serious view of the modernization process within their nations is one of the strongest bases for common action and common perspective on even larger issues, and one of the most important strands on which the community of free nations can be built. The Marshall Plan was carried through by this kind of alliance between Americans and the often small groups of men determined to revive their national economies; e.g., the Monnet group in France. A major immediate objective of our policy towards the underdeveloped areas must, therefore, be to help to identify these men and to support them.

14. Political Change. The fundamental U.S. objective in the underdeveloped areas is, of course, not economic development for its own sake but the maintenance of the independence of these nations and the gradual emergence of reasonably effective and increasingly democratic political systems within them. Economic development is, nevertheless, a crucial component of our policy because these political objectives are unlikely to be attained in the contemporary world without provision to the people of an environment of reasonably steady material progress.

On the other hand, the political dimension of modernization is also critically important to economic development. The central role of economic planning, education, social overhead capital, and public policy towards agriculture, foreign trade and taxation in the development process at its early stage makes the attitudes and capacities of governments directly relevant to economic analysis and aid policy.

The modernization process will inevitably create political tensions and crises. New modern-minded groups will expand as development moves forward. They will make insistent demands for power and influence on those more oriented to traditional ways. The latter may in turn, be increasingly reluctant to make concessions to a program of modernization which threatens their social and political prerogatives. This kind of tension—notably present in Latin America but endemic throughout the underdeveloped areas—poses for American policy extremely subtle problems of timing and emphasis in the use of our influence.

On occasion it may be in our interest actively to encourage change—even radical change—as it would have been in Batista’s Cuba. In other cases it may be to our interest to damp the pressures for change and to seek to move the modernization process forward within the framework of an evidently transient but temporarily necessary traditional or neo-traditional framework—a course which on the whole has thus far appeared wise in Iran and South Viet-Nam. In general our basic orientation must be to the modern, progressive, and popularly-based groups within the underdeveloped areas; however, we must recognize that the rise to power of such groups will be a slow and uneven process, and that we may, on occasion, have to accommodate ourselves to less desirable situations. We must be sensitive to the pace at which power and influence can be transferred to the more modern-minded groups without risking excessive disruption in the underdeveloped societies or—in some cases—Communist exploitation of their domestic tensions.

15. The Speed of Change. In short, while there are suggestive patterns of experience emerging in the process of political and social modernization, there are no safe, fixed rules consonant with the complex of American interests except this: In most of the underdeveloped areas we must come to take change—and quite rapid change—as the norm and insure that the United States is in the process of developing rapport and understanding with emerging groups outside the government while dealing effectively with the current government. We should also be conscious of the fact that the built-in bias and habits of our government have, on the whole, tended in the past to make us too slow rather than too quick to respond to and align ourselves with the forces making for change. On balance, our interests are likely to be better served by accepting the risks of leaning forward towards more modern groups than the risks of clinging to familiar friends rooted in the past; although no general rule can govern.

F. Some Broad Aid Criteria

16. The Uses of Aid. U.S. economic and military aid are major instruments for achieving the long-term goals discussed above.

They can also render significant short-run support to urgent requirements of national security policy of the United States. Economic and military assistance can be (and have been) used to maintain indigenous armed forces beyond the economic capacity of the country concerned. Although local forces cannot be directly equated with U.S. forces—either with respect to their capabilities or their mobility—it remains the case that without such forces equipped and trained by U.S. military assistance, larger and more expensive U.S. forces would be required to fulfill the security requirements of the free community. U.S. military aid is also used to secure base rights and facilities, to obtain a favorable political or psychological impact, to offset Communist economic penetration, etc. In many instances these considerations will—as is quite proper—influence decisions with respect to the allocation of available U.S. resources.

However, aid given for these short-term purposes may—and frequently does—have undesirable side effects which contravene the longer-term and more important goals set forth above. Recipient governments may use aid to postpone or avoid essential economic reforms, or may distribute it so as to favor influential but nonconstructive groups supporting the government. External aid is a powerful consideration in a weak government; the terms on which it can be acquired and the kinds of men who are judged likely to negotiate successfully for it profoundly affect the contours and policies of such governments. Further, some countries have vigorously resisted joint or international controls over the uses to which aid might be put, and some have threatened to turn, or have turned, to the Communist Bloc when aid was not forthcoming in the types or on the terms they desired. The problem of minimizing conflicts and, where possible, creating a convergence between short-run and long-run U.S. interests in the granting of aid makes it essential that we develop clear aid criteria.

17. The Need for Criteria. It is essential, therefore, that we adopt broad criteria for assistance and move within the free community toward a consensus concerning these criteria—a consensus which should include not merely other donors of aid but also significant elements in the leadership of the underdeveloped areas themselves. Once adopted, the United States must hold firmly to these criteria, recognizing that diversions in one instance may quickly become precedents in another. The application of these criteria is likely to require—especially in the early stages of the new policy—a searching re-examination by aid bilateral recipients of their domestic economic policies and both persuasive exposition and firmness by U.S. representatives.

18. Military Aid. With respect to military aid, our policy, guided by the over-all requirements of U.S. military strategy, must take account of three factors, in addition to the military requirement of U.S. strategy in the nations or areas involved:

a. The character of the military threat these nations actually and foreseeably confront, and the degree to which their defense is, in fact, contingent on U.S. and allied forces, rather than their own. In areas (e.g., Viet-Nam) where there is a significant guerrilla warfare problem and where U.S. forces in the general area are relatively strong and able to intervene in a timely fashion, first priority in the development of indigenous forces should go to counter-insurgency tasks. Where there is an actual or incipient guerrilla warfare problem, it will not be sufficient to make counter-guerrilla policy an ancillary objective, to be pursued only insofar as it does not interfere with more conventional objectives. In countries which border the Communist Bloc, which face both external and internal local threats, and from which U.S. power is remote (e.g., Iran), conventional as well as counter-insurgency capabilities should be maintained, taking into account political, economic, and military considerations—including the remoteness or closeness to U.S. power. These conventional forces should be designed to cope with incursions, probes, and limited aggressions; to retain their combat integrity in the face of major Communist assault until U.S. and allied forces can be brought to bear; and to operate effectively in close conjunction with such U.S. forces, since their deterrent capability against substantial overt Communist aggression will hinge on an unambiguous link to U.S. military capabilities. Military aid to enhance the ability of less developed countries to undertake general war missions should, with the exception of Greece and Turkey and certain countries which have ASW missions in the Western Hemisphere, have very low priority. This very low priority should be reflected in the nature of our MAP programs. Sophisticated weapons should only be provided where the local country needs them in meeting likely local war threats and is capable of using them effectively to supplement our own plans and concepts in meeting such threats.

b. The potentiality for constructive action by military elements within these societies. Since the vast majority of our military aid goes to less developed areas, it is essential that military aid programs and U.S. influence with the local military be geared to the maximum possible to our broad objectives relating to modernization. This is particularly true in countries where the major threat comes from within. Consistent with military requirements, emphasis should be placed on training and other programs which ensure that the military assist, rather than hinder, the process of modernization.

c. The appropriate allocation of resources (local and U.S.) as between military and civil purposes. Since there is generally competition for scarce budgetary and other resources in these countries, we should try, where we are in a position to affect decisions by the level of our military aid and the substitutes that we can offer therefor, to ensure that local military programs are not prosecuted on a scale that would threaten the success of economic development needed to ensure the independence, progress, and stability of the country.

The application of the complex criteria suggested under (a)–(c) above, must be worked out on a country-by-country basis, taking into account regional circumstances, the relevant political and psychological factors, and the area requirements of our military plans and concepts. These factors, systematically applied case by case, will in some instances bring about military aid policies more austere in quantity and more directed to civil purposes than in the past. In applying these criteria the political and psychological consequences, favorable and unfavorable, of altering the present scale and structure of local military establishments and US military assistance, should be taken into account. When a higher level of MAP than can be justified on the basis of the above criteria must be temporarily maintained, we should seek to ensure that it contributes to sound modernization.

19. Economic Aid. The appropriate general political standard with respect to aid is the extent to which, by and large, the granting of such aid will tend to encourage, over a period of time, the will of the people and the government concerned to maintain their effective independence in the face of Communist blandishments and pressures, both from without and from within. Aid should not, as a normal practice, be increased or withheld in an attempt to earn more short-term political gains, e.g., to secure “good will” or specific favors.

The appropriate general economic standard is that aid should be granted so as to encourage and reward progress toward modernization—with all that this involves in the way of economic development and social and political progress. There will be times, therefore, when U.S. interests can be more effectively promoted by denying than by providing aid. Wherever possible, an expansion in aid should be related to a demonstration of increased capacity and will to mobilize local resources and to organize effective development programs.

Nevertheless, some aid must be granted defensively: to buy time for nations to weather crises and to keep open the possibility of their development as independent nations. When aid is granted on a basis other than self-help we should seek to ensure that it contributes to longer-term U.S. objectives. Thus even economic assistance for political purposes can be designed to promote economic development or to bring meaningful benefits to those groups among whom the Communist appeal is greatest.

20. Levels of Economic Aid. The forces at work in the underdeveloped areas making for more effective mobilization of local resources and increased attention to development problems are gathering strength; and it seems reasonable to expect that the pursuit of our basic objectives and policies in the underdeveloped areas will require rising levels of capital assistance during the 1960’s. The U.S. should be prepared to join other developed countries in meeting this need for rising levels of assistance. Until we have achieved and maintained an overall equilibrium in the US balance of payments, it should do this in ways which minimize pressure on the U.S. balance of payments, e.g. by emphasizing the procurement of US goods and services in our assistance programs.

G. Differing Stages of Under-Development: The Relativity of Self-Help

21. Wide Variations. In applying the criteria outlined above it should be borne in mind that what we call underdeveloped nations range over a wide spectrum; and that the standard of self-help performance that can legitimately be expected will vary with the degree of underdevelopment, as well as with unique local factors.

22. Broad Categories. Broadly speaking, it is possible to array the underdeveloped nations in four categories:

a. In nations touched by the modern world but still close to the stage of traditional society, our aid programs should generally aim, on a project basis, to help provide the basic preconditions for sustained growth: resource surveys; training and education programs; technical assistance; help in creating needed institutions; and fundamental capital in such basic fields as transport, electric power, and agriculture. Nations in this category have a peculiarly high requirement for the development of their human resources, although this requirement remains throughout all stages of underdevelopment. They also require encouragement to focus their new or heightened national ambitions on the concrete tasks of development. Where appropriate, the long term commitment features of our aid legislation should be used for this purpose. Many of the nations of Africa, Afghanistan, Yemen, Laos, Haiti, and Honduras illustrate this category.

b. In countries which have broken in many directions with their traditional way of life and have absorbed many of the techniques and institutional forms of modern life, but which either lack the technical capacity to mobilize effectively their assets (e.g., Bolivia), or which have not yet fully committed their political and institutional capacity to the practical tasks of modernization (e.g., Iran), our object should be to encourage—in all the ways open to us—an increased concentration of effort on the process of modernization and an enhanced ability to carry out the process. While many tools of aid policy may be relevant in such countries—including, notably, assistance in the design of projects, in administration and in planning itself—a special effort should be made to use U.S. political influence in all its dimensions to focus the attention of the political leadership and elite groups on the concrete business of modernization, as opposed to other objectives. In this process of persuasion, we should be prepared to put forward the possibility of substantial and sustained U.S. economic assistance geared to an effective national development program as an important incentive.

c. Third, in nations which are substantially committed to the process of modernization and prepared to mobilize systematically their assets—human, material, and institutional—to this objective, we should be prepared to organize from our own resources and those of the more advanced nations, systematic long-term assistance programs, controlled by relatively strict criteria. India, Colombia, and Nigeria fall in this small but relatively more advanced group.

d. In nations which have experienced an initial sustained surge of growth, but have developed severe problems of structural imbalance—often coming to rest upon their external payments situation, we should be prepared to provide substantial guidance and assistance in order to permit the growth process to be resumed in more stable balance, but our policy should assume that they will soon be capable of mounting serious development programs financed, over the long term, from their own resources and from external aid granted on a conventional bankable basis, and should seek to hasten this circumstance. Argentina, Venezuela, and the Philippines fall in this category.

H. The Residual Problem of Colonialism

23. The Issue. A high proportion of the crises in the underdeveloped areas has been related directly or indirectly to the ending of the colonial era. While that era is substantially closed out, this very fact is likely to heighten the pressure for the final removal of colonial enclaves and lead to extreme impatience in the underdeveloped areas where colonialism remains an important unifying issue in domestic politics. Our task is to deal with this problem in ways which will be consistent with our efforts to fashion a free community of interdependent countries, including both developed and less developed nations.

The task is complicated by the fact that we must deal with three widely-differing situations:

—Those in which the metropole is willing to grant independence and is preparing to do so, as in the case with the British in East Africa.

—Those in which the metropole is determined to preserve its colonial domain or protectorate, as are the Portuguese and the South Africans.

—Those where the colonial areas are so small or so fragmented that it is virtually impossible to foresee the development of viable independent entities. This is the case with many small areas such as the Carolines, the Marquesas, Curacao, Gambia, Basutoland, etc.

24. U.S. Policy. In these circumstances United States policy should provide for:

a. Intimate private consultation with the remaining colonial powers, designed to help them perceive that an orderly transition from the historic colonial relationship to a status acceptable to the local people involved is the only realistic course consistent with their long-run interest and the interest of the free community, combined with assurance of our assistance—and, if possible, the assistance of other allies—in engineering this transition.

b. Accelerated efforts, through all available means, to increase the capacity of the peoples within those colonial areas which are potentially viable to rule responsibly when independence is granted.

c. Attempts to devise formulae which will permit non-viable areas (including those under U.S. control or trusteeship) greater internal autonomy and a satisfactory form of association with the metropole or with neighboring countries.

d. Increased endeavors to use the UN as an instrument for the transfer or sharing of sovereignty and as a tutor in the process of political development.

e. Efforts to persuade the more moderate and responsible nations in the underdeveloped world that they should not press for premature granting of independence, but should work constructively with the international community to assure that the independence or autonomy which will inevitably come will not be disruptive of major common interests.

25. Taken together, these five elements constitute a policy which underlines the inevitability of the end of colonialism but combines it with patient and affirmative action designed to avoid the kind of chaos which accompanied the Belgian withdrawal from responsibility in the Congo. It requires from us a more forehanded approach with respect to our European allies, our more moderate partners among the underdeveloped nations, and within the colonial areas themselves than we have exhibited in the past. And it means that we ourselves must consider new forms of government for the areas belonging to us or under our trusteeship.

III. THE FRAMEWORK OF ORGANIZATION

A. Introduction

1. The goal. The vitality of the free community will rest substantially, over the foreseeable future, on the inner strength and capacity for progress of the individual nations which comprise it; and the success of our policy will continue to depend significantly on what nations do for themselves and on what we do with them on a bilateral basis. Nevertheless, for reasons set out in Part One, the forces at work on the world scene will increasingly require cooperative international actions if the security, economic, and political requirements of the free community are to be successfully met.

Chapter II, of Part One, in outlining this concept, indicated the role within it of the several regions of the free community, including the special status in US policy of Western Europe and Latin America, as well as the priority perspective to be applied, on various issues, with respect to the more developed and less developed nations of the free community. This chapter, within those policy injunctions, addresses itself to certain key problems of organization.

The evolutionary process of organization envisaged will meet powerful and stubborn resistance in the form of national pre-occupations, regional disputes, and Communist obstruction.

Nevertheless, in moving towards the organization of a free community of nations, we are pursuing an objective which already has a high measure of de facto acceptance rooted in the hard facts of interdependence and are building on an extraordinary range of existing institutions. Although the problems of communal organization and institution-building are world-wide and interrelated, they will, for convenience be examined under six headings which embrace the bulk of the existing international organizations, and which also follow the main lines of the argument of this paper.

—Organizing and protecting the Northern “hard core.”

—Extra-European regional military organizations, designed to hold the balance of power outside Europe.

—North-South economic organizations.

—Indigenous regional economic organizations.

—Worldwide economic organizations.

—The United Nations.

B. Organizing and Protecting the Northern “Hard Core”

2. The “Hard Core.” The first and highest priority mission in creating an organizational framework for the free community is to bind the United States into effective partnership with Europe and in some degree Canada and Japan in the major tasks of defense and modernization within the community of free nations. The balance of power cannot be securely held, in either its military or ideological dimensions, unless the strength and the policies of the more advanced nations, which happen to be mostly in the Northern Hemisphere, are effectively aligned and geared to the essential common enterprises of the free community. Although bilateral negotiations and consultations remain important, this can best be done by building upon existing or developing organizations which bring these nations together.

3. The European Community. The United States should support the movement towards European unity for two basic reasons:

First, as a means of ensuring Western European security in the face of Communist pressures and enticements and, thereby, holding firmly the balance of power in Western Eurasia. A more united Europe should generate greater force to withstand Communist threats and pressures; greater confidence to withstand Communist enticements; greater progress to withstand Communist attempts at subversion and takeover; greater powers of attraction to the East; and a political and psychological framework for the firm attachment of West Germany to the West, even though a significant portion of Germany is in the hands of the Communists.

Second, to bring an end to the internecine rivalries among European states that have so long bred weakness and conflict, and to supplant parochial nationalism by political allegiance to a strong united European commonwealth, capable of joining the United States in effectively defending and building the community of free nations. Such a commonwealth would provide a framework within which European resources and energies might be organized in ways which would permit Europe to share the world-wide responsibilities which have fallen disproportionately on the United States since the Second World War.

4. The Transatlantic Link. In the face of the world environment which confronts Europe and the United States, none of these functions can be effectively performed unless Western Europe increases its degree of unity; but none of them is likely to be effectively performed unless Western Europe is also linked in increasing intimacy with the United States and, in some measure, Canada. The guiding rule of our European policy, therefore, should be not merely to enhance the strength and cohesion of the European community but to do so within the framework of a close and vigorous Atlantic partnership. This requires an intensification of our efforts to strengthen NATO and the OECD.

5. Political Integration. We should be prepared to encourage, within this Atlantic framework, the tendency in Europe to extend its integration into political affairs. Such integration should take place through the enlarged European Community (including the UK). The danger that a united Europe linked to the Atlantic Community will emerge as a third force deliberately prepared, for example, to play the United States and the USSR off against each other is relatively slight, so long as vital European interests are protected within the Atlantic Partnership. The essential and difficult task of the United States is to act so that the European countries will believe that their vital interests are so protected. That risk is outweighed by the advantages to us of a more united and purposeful Europe; and these advantages would be intensified if Western Europe moved toward integration politically as well as economically. Since Europe is not likely within the foreseeable future to form a single unified government, the United States must for the time concentrate upon promoting closer intra-European associations and fostering those European organizations which seem most likely to form the nuclei of a united Europe.

6. The Position of the Non-NATO Countries. A united Europe requires increasingly concerted policy in political, economic, and military affairs. Movement in this direction is complicated by the fact that several of the European states (Finland, Sweden, Ireland, Switzerland, and Austria) are not in NATO, and that Spain, with which we have important bilateral military arrangements, is, for the time being, not politically acceptable to some of our allies as a NATO member. The neutrals will resist political and economic arrangements which appear to infringe on their neutrality. On the other hand, the political life of these nations is crucially dependent on economic relations of the greatest possible freedom and intimacy with the Common Market; and the United States has a stake in the stability of their political life and their being oriented towards the Common Market. In the short run—while the British negotiations for entry into the Common Market proceed—the dilemma posed by the position of non-NATO countries requires the intensive use of the OECD as a general instrument for economic co-ordination within the Atlantic community. The longer run problem of non-NATO countries’ relations with the EEC will have to be faced in the light of the outcome of the UK–EEC negotiation and should be the subject of urgent United States planning and examination of alternatives.

7. The U.K. Role. We should encourage the United Kingdom to participate fully in the movement toward European integration, both to strengthen that movement in all its dimensions and to balance the present Franco-German relationship on which the movement towards European unity has hitherto largely depended. We should encourage the British to view the development of a united Europe within an invigorated Atlantic Partnership as a framework within which the historic natural ties between the United States and Britain are most likely to be effective and constructive. We should look to a reduction in formal arrangements that embody the “special” United States bilateral relation with the United Kingdom, notably those in the field of nuclear weapons. These arrangements serve as a psychological and technical brake on Britain’s full integration within the European community and diminish the sense of partnership between Continental Europe and the United States. The change in the US–UK special political relation should be carefully developed and evolutionary, and should avoid the appearance of an abrupt turn-around. It should be balanced by bringing our relation with the entire European Community as close as possible to that which we currently enjoy with the UK. Until this occurs, some continuing intimate consultation with the UK will be useful and inevitable.

8. The German Role. We should encourage German leaders and political groups to the view that it is through a deep commitment to the European community, with its trans-Atlantic ties, that German interests will be best satisfied and Germany will be able to assume an expanding role of responsibility and influence on the world scene. Increasing German absorption in the affairs of that community is the best safeguard against a recrudescence of exaggerated nationalism in German life and policy, and against the remote possibility that the West Germans may seek reunification through a deal with the USSR.

It follows, however, that Germany must be treated within the European and Atlantic communities as a full-fledged major partner; and that the West must not abandon its long-run commitment to the reunification of Germany. We should represent to German opinion that the most effective way—and perhaps the sole peaceful way—to move toward reunification lies in enhancing the strength, stability, and attractive power of the European community into which East Germany might eventually be absorbed. The credibility of this posture is dependent upon a firm defense of the freedom of West Berlin, and the maintenance of its viability as a city of international significance, since West Berlin remains a symbol of unification to German opinion.

9. France. Our objective vis-a`-vis France is the same as toward the UK and Germany: To encourage that nation to participate fully in the movement toward European integration and Atlantic partnership as a basis for building and defending the free community.

This objective is most likely to be fulfilled not by direct suasion of the French Government but by the creation of circumstances which make it appear that such a course would serve France’s national interest. These circumstances can best be promoted if we hold to our present policy of encouraging and assisting the forces—in France as well as other European countries—that wish to create a European Community and Atlantic partnership, in which France can play a large and leading role, and of using our influence to help deny the possibility of an alternative solution: A loose European grouping which is neither integrated nor tightly linked to the US. In particular, we must give a convincing demonstration that the US intends, in fact, to deal with France and Continental Europe on the same basis as we deal with Great Britain and to subsume the special relation to Britain in the larger transatlantic linkage. In the degree that the forces making for European integration and Atlantic partnership grow in strength, the French Government is likely—either during or after DeGaulle’s term of office—to conclude that it can play a larger role in creating a strong Europe by working with than by opposing the trends which these forces have set in motion. Indeed, support for this course is plainly growing in French opinion, as reflected in the MRP resignations, the Assembly walk-out, and increasing press discussion of the advantages of some kind of multilateral nuclear enterprise.

It follows that it would be contra-productive to deviate from the policy outlined above, by supporting approaches to political or nuclear problems which are not consistent with our basic goals of European integration and Atlantic partnership, in an attempt to elicit greater support from France. This would merely weaken and discourage the forces favoring these goals, on whose success our long-term policy depends. The gifted statesman who now heads the French Government might be moved by the unfolding of history but he would not be swayed by concessional changes in US policy, which he would view as a sign of irresolution, any more than he would be swayed by pressures. He respects in others the quality on which he sets most store in his own policy: consistent dedication to long-term objectives and a refusal to be driven off course by the shifting winds of the moment. We will be most likely to secure and maintain his respect, and eventually gain his cooperation, by evidencing this quality in consistent pursuit of the European policy laid down above. He has shown when necessary, that he can accommodate to trends he cannot alter, once he is convinced that this is in his interest and that opportunities are open for him to do so in a way which is consistent with the dignity and prestige of the great country he leads.

On a basis of mutual respect and within the context of our underlying policy, we should seek as good relations with the French Government as it is prepared to entertain, and we should consult and cooperate with that government as intimately as is feasible. We should make clear, by word and deed, our desire to join France in meeting outstanding problems on an agreed basis, in the framework of the European integration and Atlantic partnership which we, the other continental countries, and much of French opinion supports. In the long run, this posture is likely to make for sounder US-French relations than one which seeks to influence de Gaulle either by publicly isolating him or by agreeing to courses of action which he and other Europeans would consider an abandonment of our stated basic goals.

10. The Agenda of the Atlantic Community. The persuasiveness of our European policy depends on effective movement forward on the major items which are the agenda of the Atlantic partnership—not only the defense of Europe but intensified US-European cooperation in the defense and building of the free community, with all this involves in the way of the political and military policies in non-European areas and intensive consultation in the fields of trade, balance of payments, fiscal and monetary policies, and policy towards economic assistance to the underdeveloped areas. These elements of the US-European partnership are discussed below.

11. Military. The countries of Europe will be more inclined to address the larger problems of the free community in major partnership with the United States if they can develop solid assurance that their homeland—which they see threatened by both preponderant Soviet ground forces and missiles—is as secure from Soviet threats and military pressures as the facts of military life now and foreseeably permit.

12. Basic strategy. Over a long term future characterized by increasing Soviet nuclear capabilities, this assurance and security can best be maintained by a posture which convinces the Europeans that (i) NATO can deter or deal with non-nuclear hostilities short of all-out attack without initial resort to nuclear weapons; (ii) nuclear weapons will be available to the alliance, as needed, to deter or to deal with an expansion or debilitating prolongation of these hostilities. Each of these requirements is discussed below.

13. NATO Non-Nuclear Forces. Despite the resources and manpower advantages NATO has over the Soviet Union and its satellites, and despite its present sizeable resources allocation to military purposes, NATO forces in Europe are, on the whole, inferior in strength to those of the Bloc.

An urgent objective of NATO policy is the strengthening of these non-nuclear forces. NATO requires such strengthened forces to deal with recurring limited crises (e.g., over Berlin) where an immediate resort to nuclear weapons would be judged neither politically nor militarily rational. If those non-nuclear capabilities are not available, the Soviets will be encouraged to a more aggressive policy and allied agreement to a firm response will prove more difficult to obtain when Communist pressures materialize.

In particular, the forces in the Central Region should be strengthened. The immediate objective should be to develop a capability to stop Soviet attack short of a major mobilization of Communist forces, rather than to defeat in non-nuclear action every conceivable element of Soviet non-nuclear strength that might come into play. The urgent goal, therefore, is to create forces in the Central Region of the order of magnitude of MC 26/4. Supporting air will be an important requirement; special attention should be devoted to ensuring that NATO aircraft are so protected, dispersed, and armed as to be ready to discharge their non-nuclear missions instantly and effectively, in the face of non-nuclear attack. It is equally urgent that allied forces be raised to high quality standards. There are many specific deficiencies of a magnitude that not only leave NATO’s non-nuclear posture dangerously weak, but also reduce the effectiveness of measures currently being undertaken.

The US should be forthcoming and unremitting in setting forth the factual basis for its judgment of the need for non-nuclear force improvements suggested above. We should, accordingly, provide our NATO allies with more information on nuclear and non-nuclear forces and strategies than we have in the past; and we should do so on a continuing basis. Our presentation should emphasize in a positive manner the benefits which NATO would derive from having adequate non-nuclear strength and should show why alternative policies are less suitable. Our allies cannot be expected to behave as responsible partners unless they are treated as such, within a framework of candid discussion of NATO forces and strategy. The program of discussions should include full treatment of not only the probable effect of non-nuclear improvements but also (i) US strategic striking forces, stressing the great strength and operational effectiveness of these forces, and the fact that the plans for their use cover European as well as North American interests; (ii) the role and probable effect of using tactical (interdiction and battlefield) nuclear forces in Europe, conveying our present understanding of the dynamics of nuclear warfare, which suggest that a local nuclear engagement would probably do grave damage to Europe, might be militarily ineffective, and would more likely than not expand very rapidly into general nuclear war. It is essential that our allies understand the limited advantages to them of tactical nuclear warfare if they are to give needed support to the non-nuclear build-up. It is also essential that this discussion be properly balanced by a full exposition of superior US strategic nuclear strength, so that it will not cause our allies to question their security in the period before non-nuclear improvements are achieved.

The US must evidence its dedication to non-nuclear improvements by deeds, as well as words. We should maintain substantial ground and tactical air forces in Europe. We should be prepared to provide modest military aid to the NATO non-nuclear build-up; with the exception of Portugal, Greece, and Turkey, such aid should not be provided unless it would result in increased allied efforts. We should consider contributing to a multilateral NATO stockpile of non-nuclear military equipment, providing that our allies are willing to make proportionate contributions, and if it seems that this would result in allied force increases that would not otherwise take place.

14. NATO Nuclear Forces. Even with a non-nuclear build-up, nuclear weapons will remain central to the security of Europe. If our allies are to feel secure, therefore, their major concerns in the nuclear field must be met in some degree. The US should seek to respond to the allied nuclear concerns set forth below in a way which (i) discourages national nuclear capabilities, since their divisive political effects work against achievement of cohesive European and Atlantic Communities; and (ii) gives maximum assurance, consistent with the foregoing of continuing US participation in the planning and control of non-US nuclear forces and centralized nuclear command in the military field:

(a) In response to allied fears that the US will “de-nuclearize” NATO Europe, by withdrawing all tactical nuclear weapons: We should be prepared to fulfill the substantial programs for development of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe to which we are already specifically committed, if our allies desire to complete these programs. These programs will largely meet present European expectations (except regarding MRBM’s, which are treated later); they will link the conventional defense of Europe to strategic nuclear forces outside the continent; they will help to deter any rational Soviet initiation of tactical nuclear warfare; and they will leave the Soviets sufficiently uncertain about our use of tactical weapons to make massive ground concentrations unattractive. We should stimulate and join periodic allied review of these programs to determine (i) whether they are still needed in the light of the strategy outlined above and a changing military environment; (ii) how execution of such programs can be geared to the goal of ensuring that nuclear weapons remain under firm control before and during non-nuclear and nuclear hostilities. We should not assume the costs and risks of expanding these programs in the absence of new and compelling considerations—notably clear evidence that such an expansion is needed to fulfill the above purposes. We should be sensitive to the political implications of discrimination between US and allied forces in the possession of battlefield tactical nuclear weapons and we should make clear that there will be no major withdrawal of such weapons from Europe without full allied consultation.

(b) In response to allied desires for more information about US strategic nuclear forces and for more participation in the planning and political control of these forces: We should share information about the nature and intended use of US strategic forces to the maximum extent consistent with US security requirements. We should join in establishing procedures which would afford our allies an opportunity to provide the President with informed political advice concerning the application of agreed guidelines to specific cases and to participate in planning regarding these forces to the extent feasible and consistent with US security.

(c) In response to allied desires that specific US external forces be available to NATO in wartime, and that targets of direct interest to Europe be adequately covered: We should maintain the commitment of Polaris submarines to NATO, announced at Athens. The possible commitment to NATO of additional US external strategic forces, including forces earmarked for use against targets which directly threaten Europe, should be the subject of continuing study.

(d) In response to rising desires for a larger European role in the ownership, control, and manning of major nuclear forces and for greater independence in nuclear matters: The US should be prepared, if its allies desire to add MRBM’s to alliance forces and to participate in their deployment, to assist in creating a multilaterally owned, controlled, and manned sea-borne MRBM force, although it should make clear that it does not believe that an urgent military need for MRBM’s exists. The use of such a force would be determined on the basis of guidelines and procedures agreed between ourselves and our allies. Planning for the use of such a multilateral MRBM Force should assume that it would be employed within the NATO framework, in integral association with other alliance nuclear forces. Construction of a force along these lines should not imply, therefore, that the separate defense of Europe was its military purpose or likely effect from a military standpoint.

This course may, if our allies believe that control over the multilateral force can be settled in a way which meets their concerns, contribute incentives which would help to postpone or avert the creation of further national nuclear capabilities, notably in Germany, and it might establish a precedent which would increase the likelihood of the present UK and French national programs eventually being merged into some kind of multi-national program. This is the more likely to come about if our posture, in the meantime, makes clear that the US is not prepared to assist national nuclear programs, as an alternative means of satisfying allied desires for a greater nuclear role. While responding to allied desires for a multilateral controlled force, therefore, we should continue to oppose and discourage any movement toward a strengthening of national nuclear capabilities in Europe:

a. By opposing the initiation of additional national programs.

b. By refusing assistance for the French national nuclear program.

c. By encouraging the United Kingdom to phase out its independent strategic program in favor of participation in the multilateral program referred to above, and refusing any new commitments for aid to the United Kingdom in maintaining national nuclear and nuclear delivery capabilities.

d. By refusing to deploy additional MRBM’s to the forces of individual European countries, since the deployment would be politically divisive and could tend to evolve into de facto national nuclear capabilities, whether or not the resulting forces were committed to SACEUR.

The creation of a multilateral force may stem pressures for national forces for a time, but the long-term future is more difficult to predict as between (1) the proliferation of national nuclear capabilities including the possibility of Franco-German collaboration; (2) the creation of a European Community nuclear force of modest size; (3) the posture outlined above, with possibly a NATO multilateral force helping to deflect pressures away from both national nuclear forces and a solely European nuclear force. Our objectives, if a choice between these three alternatives emerges, should be governed by the broad policy objectives laid down in the third sentence of paragraph 14.

15. Partnership in the Free Community. With a greater sense of confidence in its military security—and of participation in its own defense—Europe should be prepared to enter systematically into an expanded partnership with the US and Canada in meeting the problems of the rest of the free community. To this end, the consultative processes and machinery of the OECD—and, more specifically, NATO which has lagged behind the OECD in this respect—should be strengthened so that the Atlantic nations may come increasingly to have a sense of participation in the making of policy in political, economic, and defense matters, and so that there may emerge the outlines of a broad common policy. The difficulties of identifying and agreeing upon the common interests underlying such a policy will be very great, and should not be under-estimated. Ad hoc meetings among responsible policy-making officials at the ministerial or sub-ministerial level should be encouraged, to permit small groups informally to discuss well-prepared subjects which are really relevant to the problems they are coping with in their capitals. The US should be prepared, in this connection, to consult early and in depth with its major NATO partners on major foreign policy matters which we see arising in the immediate future; and we should make our senior officials available for NATO, no less than OECD committees. The US should also study the possibility of changes in the existing NATO international structure, in order to create a mechanism for expressing the common interests of the Atlantic Alliance as a whole. The existing NATO planning group (APAG) can make a major contribution to this end, and the US should work actively to strengthen it.

16. Policy Toward Third Areas. This process of consultation should aim, in particular, at the gradual development of a common perspective on the problems of the free world community in extra-European regions. The European nations tend still to look at Asia, Africa, and the Middle East in the light of certain historic national interests and commitments just as the US, for historic reasons, looks on Latin America and the Western Pacific in special perspectives.

At the present time there are wide and dangerous discrepancies of view among the major Western allies with respect to Southeast Asia. These could split the alliance if in that area we faced an acute showdown with Communist China. Similarly there are awkward cross purposes in alliance policy toward the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America which reduce the over-all effectiveness of the free community’s policy in those regions and open up unnecessary opportunities for Communist exploitation.

A concerted effort must, therefore, be made to align somewhat more closely the perspective of the Atlantic Community on Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, if common strategic, political and economic policies are to be executed.

17. The Goal. We should aim to create, out of a protracted effort at consultation and consensus-building, a relationship between the Atlantic Community and the less developed areas of the world which will transcend and encompass the ties between the former metropoles and their erstwhile colonies or areas of special interest. On the basis of that relationship—which would still permit areas of special national interest and involvement—an authentic partnership between the more developed and less developed portions of the free community might gradually emerge.

18. Economic Relationships. Joint action in the economic field is needed both to accelerate growth in the Atlantic countries and to achieve a new relationship between the industrialized and the less-developed countries of the free community. The OECD provides a framework for consultation and joint action in the economic field to this end, which must be exploited if the Atlantic nations are to use their full potential in building that community. The OECD should, therefore, be used to promote economic growth, financial stability, and external payments equilibrium and to encourage greater freedom of movement of people, goods, services, and means of payment. The net result will be more effective allocation of effort and higher rates of growth, which are needed to fulfill the defensive and constructive tasks outlined in Chapters I and II. To these ends the OECD should be used:

a. To expand trade, in concert with GATT, on a multilateral non-discriminatory basis by drastic across-the-board reductions in tariffs and by the elimination of non-tariff obstacles to trade, and to concert on steps regarding production, trade and pricing of surplus agricultural commodities. Progress along these lines will create an atmosphere in which it will be easier to agree on reductions in restrictions on imports from less developed areas. In addition, as has been suggested, the strengthening of economic policy coordination in the OECD, with special regard to trade, will help to convince non-EEC countries that the OECD provides an acceptable alternative to EEC association, at least in the short-term.

b. To increase efforts to reduce restrictions on the movement of capital.

c. To coordinate monetary and fiscal policies, so that countries can pursue expansionist domestic economic progress without undue fear of generating imbalances in international payments, and to help correct inequities in the burdens borne in common enterprises of the free community as they come to rest on the balance of payments position of particular nations.

d. To increase the magnitude and improve the quality of aid to the less-developed countries, to concert on criteria for aid and on the allocation of that aid as between major needs, and to agree on an equitable sharing of the burdens by a variety of means—including the formation of coordinating groups for receiving aid requests of specific countries or regions.

e. A particular effort should be made in the fields of (i) exchange of persons; (ii) two-way contacts between civic, business, labor, and professional groups in the Atlantic and less-developed nations; (iii) educational activities of assistance to less-developed countries; (iv) programming assistance to these countries; (v) research on key problems which are important to the development process; and (vi) technical assistance. The projected OECD Development Center should be made a vigorous center for this sort of multilateral work.

Action to these ends in the OECD should be accompanied by effective steps toward the same objectives in such other forums as the IBRD, IMF, the GATT, and the UN. A useful division of labor between the OECD and these four wider forums is emerging and this should be encouraged.

19. Japan. The role of Japan in Asia is in many ways similar to the critical role of West Germany in Europe. Although Japan lacks the domestic political base for contributing as much to the defense of the free community as can West Germany, and the trend of voting has been steadily shifting to the left, its denial to the Communist Bloc and its association with the West is a critically important element in US policy. Our concern with Japan is, however, based only in part on our desire to preserve within the free community a country critical to the maintenance of the balance of power in Asia and on the importance of US bases in Japan and Okinawa. It is also necessary to engage Japanese energies and resources on a systematic basis so that this powerful nation, moving forward at an extraordinary rate, might contribute substantially to the constructive enterprises of the free community—and thus find a role of dignified world responsibility.

The process of engaging Japan effectively within the free community should advance on several fronts simultaneously:

—in Asia itself, where we should seek to involve Japan constructively in the development problems of the whole area from Karachi to Seoul;

—in intimate bilateral relations with the US; and,

—as rapidly as European resistance can be overcome, in the common enterprises of the north which fall within the work of the OECD, beginning with the coordination of monetary and fiscal policies related to the international balance of payments.

Although Japan should develop a special role with respect to aid for the underdeveloped areas of Asia, its participation in assistance to the development process in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America should also be encouraged.

C. Extra-European Regional Military and Security Organizations and Relationships

20. OAS. In Latin America the OAS provides us with an important regional instrument, with security as well as political and economic functions. Its development should be given a priority which accords with the special importance of Latin America outlined in Part I, Para. 7. Within the OAS framework we should aim to strengthen a sense of common mission both to accelerate economic and social progress in the Hemisphere and to defend this region from Communist intrusion. The former task requires increased consultation with our Latin American neighbors, greater use of the OAS as a forum to determine policies, and closer attention to its potentialities as an instrument of economic and social development, along the lines already established by the formation of the Committee of Nine. The latter task involves not merely the isolation of Castro but also the development of a pervasive understanding of Communist techniques of infiltration, subversion, and guerrilla warfare and the mounting of national, bilateral, and collective techniques to deal with them at an early stage of their germination, a process requiring a more intimate cooperation among the civil and military arms of US policy, on a country basis, than we normally achieve. After a long period of complacency and neglect, the building of the OAS in terms of these constructive and security missions must enjoy a very high and sustained priority in national policy.

21. Other Areas. Around the whole periphery of the Communist Bloc from Iran to Korea (excepting Afghanistan, Nepal, India and Burma) the US is now formerly committed to hold the balance of power and to defend the frontiers of freedom. These commitments are incorporated in a series of bilateral arrangements, as well as in CENTO, SEATO, and ANZUS. The problem of effectively sustaining and maintaining these commitments is a difficult one, since it is impossible for indigenous countries, even with considerable US assistance, to match the non-nuclear forces of the Communist powers or to exert any meaningful defense against the nuclear capabilities of the Soviet Union. This places upon the US prime responsibility not only for deterring major aggression but also for supporting indigenous forces against local incursions—a task which, in the case of exposed countries like Iran, places severe demands upon available US forces.

22. CENTO, SEATO, and ANZUS. The efforts of the United States to pool the military resources of the area and to provide a feeling of security through regional alliances have not been wholly satisfactory. The opposition of India to CENTO, the failure of the US formally to join the alliance, the defection of Iraq, and the inherent problems of Iranian defense, have left it relatively weak. SEATO has only one member on the mainland of Southeast Asia; and its Asian members regard the presence of Britain and France in the organization as a dilution rather than strengthening of their security, as well as a presence which inhibits ties with other Asian nations.

Evidently fresh attempts to work out the optimum method for defending the free community beyond the reach of NATO—and for providing a sense of security to the peoples concerned—are required not merely in the light of the unsatisfactory status of CENTO and SEATO but also in the light of the shifting nature of the Communist threat; the changing role of US forces in the defense of these areas; changing military technology; and the changing economic and political requirements of the frontier nations.

Specifically the US should: (i) strengthen the sense of security of Thailand and Iran, on a bilateral basis with respect to overt Communist aggression; (ii) encourage the development of local capabilities in Thailand and Iran to deal with Communist subversion and insurrection; and (iii) while maintaining fully the Manila Pact as the foundation for the US commitment in Southeast Asia and our bilateral ties to Iran, encourage the members of SEATO and CENTO to engage in wider regional relationships and groupings with respect to non-defense matters.

With these shifts in stance, the US should continue, when necessary, to support up-dated efforts through CENTO and SEATO, and should seek other more varied and less exclusively defense-oriented channels of communication—bilateral and multilateral—which may serve to increase the concern of the peoples and leaders of this part of the world for their own safety and progress. Although ANZUS has not played an active role in recent Asian crises, it should be supported as an important political-military link; and we should be prepared to respond to Australian and New Zealand initiatives to move closer to the United States in military planning, equipment of their armed forces, intelligence, etc.

D. North-South Economic Relations

23. Bilateral Ties. The bilateral arrangements linking the more advanced to the less-developed nations of the free community are the most powerful north-south economic ties now in existence and are likely to remain so for some time. We should make a deliberate effort when feasible, to convert these bilateral ties with a particular nation—centered on its development program—into a longer range consortium effort, a technique which may prove increasingly fruitful as a means of mobilizing needed resources and of bringing developed and less developed members of the free community into common enterprises.

24. Multilateral Institutions. In addition, we should seek to strengthen significant multilateral institutions concerned with the north-south economic relationship:

a. Particular attention should be paid to commodity stabilization agreements and other measures which link the industrialized and the less-developed nations in efforts to preserve fair and reasonably stable terms of trade.

b. A high priority effort should be made to give the Alliance for Progress the working methods and substance it needs as quickly as possible.

c. In the OECD Development Assistance Committee unrelenting US pressure must be exerted to expand the participation of European nations in development planning, to expand their membership in regional or international development organizations, and to bring into equitable alignment the contributions to economic development of the more advanced nations, including the smaller countries of the north, in the form of grants, long-term low interest loans, and technical and educational assistance. Its work should increasingly focus on individual country development programs and be linked to the IBRD, particularly in organizing consortium arrangements.

d. We should encourage the more highly developed countries of the British Commonwealth to aid those members making the transition from colonialism and to provide technical, educational and administrative assistance to the newly-independent areas.

e. Until alternative solid links are created, the US should back the Colombo Plan Organization, and help it develop as a more substantial instrument.

f. We should encourage the French to continue their role of providing resources for economic development through the French Community. However, trends in Africa are likely to open the French Community to non-French aid relationships. The sooner the French can find an alternative world role, relating themselves to the underdeveloped areas on a wider basis, the easier it will be for them to accept gracefully the progressive dilution of the French Community—although it is not US policy to press for this dilution. We should also seek to persuade France that a US aid presence in countries with which they maintain preferential relations is, in fact, in their interest since it tends to counter the charges that France is seeking to perpetuate a monopoly position in those countries, a charge which is dangerous to the political future of the moderate African leadership devoted to cooperation with France. We should press the French to widen the range of their relationships with the underdeveloped areas—as they did by their participation in the Indian consortium. With respect to the special trading relations of the French Community to the Common Market, it is a major objective of US trade policy that the Common Market move toward non-discrimatory relations with the underdeveloped areas as a whole. Any alternative to present preferential arrangements should provide at least equal equivalent benefits to the African countries associated with the EEC, if a dangerous set-back to their development efforts and attendant major opportunities for the Bloc are to be avoided.

E. Regional Economic Organizations

25. The ECE. The UN Economic Commission in Europe is a holding operation designed to maintain East-West European contacts at a time when Europe is deeply split on military and ideological lines. The Free World countries in the ECE should intensify their efforts to expand contacts with the Eastern European countries in line with the policy of diluting satellite ties to Moscow outlined in Chapter V, below; and the US should use every opportunity to promote economic contacts and associations, which, on balance, further this purpose.

26. ECLA. In Latin America the further development of ECLA should be encouraged as a counterpart to the north-south relation on which the Alliance for Progress is based. As development proceeds, an expanding range of opportunities for useful self-help functions should emerge. In any case ECLA remains an important source of indigenous stimulus to the Latin American nations in the field of economic development and development planning. Care should be taken that the Castro regime does not succeed in using its position in ECLA as a substitute means for maintaining and establishing contacts in Latin America following its exclusion from OAS activities.

27. African Institutions. The UN Economic Commission for Africa is one instrument for encouraging functional regional development transcending the present Balkanized political structure of that Continent, and it should be used to this end. Organizations designed for sub-regional economic cooperation, such as the Afro-Malagasy Union (and its economic subsidiary, the OAMCE), deserve our discreet support. Although progress is likely to be slow, we should encourage the Africans, through their Economic Commission and by other means, to isolate concrete economic enterprises which transcend present national boundaries. We should be prepared, in principle, to support such efforts.

28. Asia. In Asia—with the revival of Japan and the increased vitality of other Asian countries—we should systematically encourage a network of increased mutual involvement and cooperation. In addition, a purposeful policy of increasing de facto bilateral cooperation with and between the countries of the region should be pursued in the whole area from India to Japan. When this movement acquires a certain momentum we may wish to look to the creation of a Pacific Community for which the US, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand could provide a nucleus of developed states and around which other states of the area could be usefully grouped for constructive purposes. Such a grouping might, conceivably, absorb the Colombo Plan organization at some future date. ECAFE, in which India holds a strong position, and which exhibits increasing cohesion and practical possibilities, also deserves our support.

29. The Middle East. In the Middle East no UN regional organization now exists, principally because of the Israeli problem, on the one hand, and the deep schisms in the Arab states, on the other. The chronic Iraqi pressure on Kuwait underlines the urgency of trying to move the Arab states toward some form of collective enterprise in the field of economic development, which might permit a portion of the oil revenues of the area to be used for the development of states which lack oil resources. The US should push this and other regional arrangements which promise a constructive solution to some of the economic and political problems of the Middle East.

F. Worldwide Economic Organizations

30. A wide range of economic organizations exist embracing, in principle, virtually the whole of the world; although, in fact, Communist participation is limited in many of them. Four are of major importance to American purposes: the IBRD, IMF, GATT and the UN. In the context of the problems of the 1960’s they are likely to take on an increased rather than a diminished importance.

31. IBRD. US policy should seek to expand the special role which the IBRD, supplemented by IDA, has to play in the development of north-south relations within the free community. The IBRD’s high standards of technical competence and integrity should be used to exert a degree of pressure for effective measures of self-help in the underdeveloped areas, which it is often difficult for the US to exert bilaterally. Moreover, as the IBRD has moved from a project to a country basis in its view of economic development, it should be used increasingly as a major ally of American policy in the mobilization of additional funds for purposes of long-term aid, through multilateral consortia and through IDA. We should encourage the expansion of IDA, partly as a major instrument for increasing the contribution of the relatively smaller nations of the north to development. American policy toward the IBRD should aim at having that organization assume an expanded role of active leadership in mobilizing resources for national development programs over the coming decade. To this end we should encourage close cooperation between the IBRD and DAC.

32. IMF. The IMF has acquired an enhanced importance as the expansion of trade within the free community has exerted pressure to economize and to use more rationally the monetary reserves available. Moreover, since our balance of payments has come under chronic pressure, the IMF has become an institution of the most direct interest to the US. The creation of the IMF special standby resources of $6 billion and the undertaking that the decisions on the use of the resources will be taken within the framework of the OECD necessitate the maintenance of close working relations between the IMF and the OECD. Finally, the IMF is likely to play a critical role in guiding the underdeveloped areas in their monetary and balance of payments problems. In the process of economic development these nations are virtually certain to confront, from time to time, periods of structural imbalance which will be reflected in their domestic and international monetary accounts; and the dispassionate guidance of the IMF, in combination with its powers to lend on short term, is an essential instrument of the free community.

In some instances the activities and recommendations of the IMF in the underdeveloped areas have not been related systematically to those of the IBRD and other agencies for development. Recommendations for monetary and balance of payments reform—without closely related measures to increase the momentum of the economy—may produce political crises, the consequences of which fall back not on the IMF, but upon the US and the free community as a whole. Accordingly, the US should use its position in, and its influence with, the IMF and the IBRD to encourage those organizations to work more closely together and with the underdeveloped areas in meeting monetary crises in ways which minimize decelerating effects on economic growth. The exercise of such US influence requires a clarification of doctrine and policy within the government on the relation between monetary stabilization and economic growth.

33. GATT. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is the principal international instrument which the US and other major trading nations use to negotiate reciprocal reductions of tariffs, to minimize other barriers to trade, and to further the conduct of trade on a multilateral, non-discriminatory basis. The number of countries which have become contracting parties to the resulting international trade agreement has grown from 23 to 40, and includes virtually all the major trading nations of the world. In continuing toward the US goal of expanding international trade through the GATT, the US should engage in negotiations for broad scale tariff reductions on the basis of such authority as the President may secure in the Trade Expansion Act.

34. Other Agencies. With respect to the various United Nations economic and specialized agencies—mainly devoted to forms of technical assistance and pre-investment activity—American policy should be pragmatic, supporting an expansion of activities where competence and need have been demonstrated and effecting a concentration of effort on major enterprises, such as the UN Special Fund. The UN Decade of Development provides a context in which these efforts can be accelerated and organized more effectively. The US now contributes about $220 million annually to the specialized agencies of the UN. AID policy, both in Washington and in the field, should take more systematically into account the manner in which these agencies might contribute more effectively to US objectives as incorporated in our country programs.

G. United Nations

35. Introduction. The United Nations is a complex of instruments through which the United States can channel a significant part of its efforts to build a free community. This fact, and the further consideration that the United Nations Assembly and its related activities have evidently moved into a new phase with the sharp expansion in the number of its African members, justifies a fundamental review to determine how we can continue to exercise leadership in the UN in the interests of US foreign policy. In undertaking this review we should bear in mind that:

a. The UN is a point of double confrontation. Here the northern more advanced nations of the free community confront, at once, the southern nations and the Communist Bloc.

b. The range of issues on which the UN has some impact through its debates and decisions is broad. For many of these, the UN can provide not only a place of discussion but also a useful instrument for prosecuting more concretely the policies outlined in this paper—playing in some cases a central, in others an ancillary, role.

c. Most issues brought before the UN are relatively intractable or already require emergency security action, since bilateral or other multilateral peaceful solutions have often been tried and proved unavailing before the issue is brought to the UN.

d. United Nations debates and decisions have an impact in varying ways and differing degrees on major issues of security, colonialism, and economic development; the tone of its deliberations and resolutions is a political fact on the world scene of some weight.

e. The temper of these discussions is determined mainly by actions which take place outside the United Nations itself; they reflect the total relative effectiveness of the free community’s policy in both its north-south and east-west dimensions. At the same time, United Nations discussions and decisions, because they have an impact on the problems we face, are one of the factors determining the total effectiveness of the free community’s policy. The American ability to continue to lead the United Nations—and to bring it to bear on occasions when it is in our interest to do so—is thus a function of our total national security policy rather than of United Nations policy narrowly defined; at the same time the existence of the United Nations, the uses to which it can be put by us (and others), and especially our ability to obtain United Nations decisions in our national interest are factors which must be considered in establishing that total policy.

36. Policy. In the light of these general considerations, the following appear to be the main implications for United States policy towards the United Nations of the broad strategy proposed in this paper:

a. Political Stance: We should attempt to dramatize systematically the three elements in our national policy which tend to bind us to the southern half of the free community: our authentic support for national independence; our willingness to assist serious efforts at economic and social development; our eagerness to press forward with serious efforts at the control of disarmament and other pacific enterprises of substance.

b. UN Effectiveness. In keeping with goals (e) and (f), below, we should seek to develop the effectiveness of the United Nations as an institution and thus increase international reliance on multilateral institutions as an alternative to the use of force. To this end, we should continue our efforts to maintain the Office of the Secretary General and the independence of the Secretariat, so that United Nations activities can be competently discharged.

c. Modernization. In the context of the Decade of Development we should use the United Nations, where feasible, to promote development objectives in less developed areas, e.g., through United Nations aid to African education, United Nations food surplus disposal, the Special Fund, etc. Such initiative will give a measure of United Nations context to our total efforts to assist the modernization process.

d. Decolonization: The United Nations has a varying but significant role to play in each of the three dimensions of the decolonization process detailed in Chapter II. The countries more recently emerged from colonial status, almost without exception, consider the United Nations to be a principal arena in which to speed up the process of decolonization, and to assist new countries in their early stages of independence, and they use it as such. To moderate the process of decolonization we must act effectively in the United Nations both in terms of policy and in employing United Nations machinery to help preempt the filling of any vacuum which decolonization may leave and which the USSR might otherwise seek to exploit. Because of the impact of decolonization on our basic national interests, we should also encourage our allies from the Atlantic Community to participate in UN activities affecting decolonization and, where necessary, to abandon outdated policies.

e. The Dampening of Latent Crises. In conformity with the precepts of the UN Charter, we should seek by forehanded action to temper conflicts within the free community, whether bilaterally, through the Secretary General, or otherwise, and to minimize the number of disruptive issues capable of Communist exploitation when publicly debated. Every success of this sort would not only strengthen the free community but also lessen the strain placed on the UN and other institutions. While in the circumstances we were fortunate to have the UN as an instrument through which to deal with the Congo crisis, the fact that the UN had to undertake so complex and precarious an operation reflects a prior failure in the policy of the free community as a whole—notably its northern component.

f. Peace-keeping Machinery. We should work to strengthen the UN peace-keeping role by improving its procedures for peaceful settlement of disputes and by making more effective its stand-by arrangements for sending UN observers, patrol forces, and political “presences” to meet emergency needs. In national security planning to deal with existing or potential free community peripheral area problems we should seek to determine where (as in West New Guinea) a UN presence or peace-keeping role could be helpful in achieving our objectives in one or another stage of the problem. Such efforts both reduce intra-free community conflicts and provide a buffer against direct East-West confrontation. We should encourage the tendency on the part of countries in Middle Eastern and African areas, in particular, to seek United Nations assistance in developing regional arrangements for keeping the peace and/or controlling arms competition.

g. Direct East-West Confrontation. While the United Nations has an essentially ancillary role on major security issues in conflict between East and West, (e.g., Berlin, Laos, Viet-Nam, and so forth) it can, nevertheless, serve as a safety valve, a buffer (as in the cases of Iran, Greece, and at one point in Laos), and a means of communication. It can serve as a court of world opinion and a convenient point of diplomatic contact and a locus of negotiation to resolve an issue (as in Berlin in 1948–49) when desired by both sides.

United Nations inspection or administration of agreed and limited public order or transit services (such as might be considered for West Berlin) remains a general possibility. Given any kind of overall or regional disarmament agreement, United Nations inspection or administration might assume substantial proportions.

Commitments to the Charter can provide a framework, as in Korea, through which action can be taken to repel a direct aggression. While the technology of modern war has telescoped the time-span within which such action would need to be taken, the United States would undoubtedly again wish to mobilize through the United Nations major diplomatic and possibly military resistance in case of conventional overt Communist aggression and, possibly, even in the case of well-documented covert aggression. The United Nations can also be a place through which cooperation for mutual interests across ideological barriers can be carried forward—as in the Scientific Committee on Radiation, the Committee on Outer Space, and in some of the Specialized Agencies.

U.S. policy should seek to exploit the potentialities of the UN in the areas of East-West confrontation indicated above.

h. Maintaining Positions of Principle in the United Nations. We should be prepared to underline our commitment to policies which are essential to building and protecting the free community, even at the risk of running against current moods and habits in the United Nations. We should stress our unshakeable commitment to provide for the security of our own people and the peoples of the free community by means consonant with the UN Charter; and to reject disarmament proposals that do not provide for effective mutual inspection or other forms of secure assurance. We must press upon the UN the need to avoid a double standard in applying the principle of peaceful change to the strongly felt interests of the north and of the south. If we were ever to adopt a position which did not reflect these essential interests, northern support for the UN—including US support—would be quickly reduced and the life of the UN itself be endangered.

i. Means of Exerting U.S. Influence. We should examine carefully present voting patterns, the balance of forces in the Assembly and the Security Council, and the present operations of the Secretariat to determine the best ways of exercising maximum US influence or control over UN decisions and actions; for example, to determine whether our very great influence in the Secretariat now exercised chiefly through informal procedures will continue or whether we will need to seek more formal means to increase our influence; whether Assembly procedures can be improved to our benefit; whether we should now shift more powers back to the Security Council; what steps we can take to insure stable financial support from other countries, etc.

IV. Relations With Communist Regimes

A. Introduction

1. Purpose. One basic purpose of the national strategy outlined in this paper is to shift the emphasis—both within the government and in the consciousness of our people—from the problem of frustrating attempted Communist incursions to the problem of how to exploit opportunities open to us in building and extending a community of free nations. This strategy rests on the intimate relationship between these two problems and, in particular, on the judgment that a positive and constructive policy towards the free community will diminish the opportunity for Communist action or incursion.

But the positive thrust of this strategy extends to our relations with the Communist nations themselves. For policy towards Communist regimes seeks not only to maintain the frontiers of freedom and build a community of free nations but also peacefully to extend this community beyond the present frontiers of the Cold War. The succeeding sections consider the implications of this policy for our relations with (i) the USSR, (ii) the European satellites (iii) Communist China, and (iv) Communist ideology. In carrying out this policy, we should bear in mind that the success or failure of Soviet foreign policy is a critical determinant of Soviet evolution and that the defense of the free community is thus perhaps the most important way of inducing changes in Soviet society.

2. The Situation. In so doing, US policy towards Communist regimes (and the peoples they rule) must take account of two differing trends, which significantly affect the nature of the confrontation.

On the one hand Communist foreign policy (and particularly that of the Soviet Union) is marked by an assertiveness which derives in part from a consciousness of growing Soviet military and economic power and in part from the continued desire of the Communist leaders to remake the world in their own image. This power-consciousness and assertiveness has manifested itself in continuing political pressures upon the West (notably over Berlin); in demands for recognition of “equality” with the United States; in an extension of Soviet activities as a world power in diplomatic, economic, scientific, and cultural dimensions; as well as in subversive enterprises.

On the other hand, there have been certain changes in Soviet domestic and foreign policy during the post-Stalin period. This trend finds expression in a more realistic appreciation of the consequences of nuclear war and of actions which could escalate into nuclear war; in greater ostensible flexibility in dealing with non-Communist forces; and in sporadic movements towards superficial détente with the United States and the West, albeit without any discernible change in underlying Soviet purpose. These limited changes, coupled with a gathering historical trend toward fragmentation within the Bloc and some modest relaxation of internal controls in the USSR and (in differing degree) within the Eastern European regimes, open the way for somewhat wider interaction between the Communist and the non-Communist worlds.

3. Implications for US Policy. These trends and developments tend to shape the different (and sometimes necessarily conflicting) directions of US policy.

(a) As long as the Communists and their partisans continue to exert unremitting pressure upon—and increasingly inside—the frontiers of the free community we must devote a high proportion of our resources and our attention to defending these frontiers. For a sense of security within the free community—and a demonstrated capacity to defend its vital interests—is a minimum condition for its creative development. These requirements for defense, and the political and psychological attitudes they generate, tend to limit the scope for US initiatives designed to exploit possibilities for diluting the unity and aggressiveness of the Communist Bloc. A consciousness of the two-track policy we should pursue might widen these limits; but they are inherent in the complex character of the confrontation.

(b) On the other hand, the trend toward change within the Bloc may, with the passage of time, open somewhat increased opportunities to try to deal with Communist regimes and the peoples they rule in terms of limited areas in which our national interests overlap with theirs, rather than merely in terms of reaction to their aggressive enterprises. It would be dangerous to assume this trend will automatically work to our advantage; it would be equally unrealistic to ignore its power and its long-run potential for our cause.

B. The USSR

4. Crisis Avoidance. Soviet policy remains systematically geared to create and to exploit openings for the extension of Soviet power and influence offered by political unrest, economic sluggishness, diplomatic disarray, and military weakness within the free community. In addition to developing a full spectrum of military capabilities which will make the Communists hesitate to employ force at any level (including guerrilla warfare and urban insurrection), we must seek to minimize the emergence of circumstances and situations which permit such Communist pressures and intervention.

As noted in Chapter III, the modernization process in the underdeveloped areas, including the process of disengagement from colonialism, has offered the richest field for Communist exploitation of crises within the free community over the past decade. A high premium attaches, therefore, in the context of US-Soviet relations not merely to the constructive policy toward the less-developed areas outlined in Section III but also to the timely identification of points of crises and forehanded action to resolve such crises before they lend themselves to Communist exploitation. A systematic effort should be mounted to this end.

5. Crises and Pre-Crisis Communication. To avoid or minimize crises promoted or exploited by the Soviet Union we should seek continuing communications, informal as well as formal, direct as well as indirect, designed to convey to Moscow, when it is in our interest to do so, a clearer understanding of our intentions. Such communications, if they are judged in Moscow to be backed by both military resources and the will to use them, may move the Communist leadership to judge it unprofitable to press as hard as they otherwise would in certain areas and situations.

6. Ground Rules. Against the background of such measures and methods, we should exploit any opportunity to work over the longer run toward such tacit understandings with the Soviets regarding the ground rules governing our competition as may be consistent with our national interests. If they are convinced of our capacity and will to deal with their efforts to extend power into the free community, it may become increasingly possible to make the Soviets feel that they share a common interest with us in the exercise of restraint and in encouraging policies of restraint on nations associated with them.

7. Crisis Management. When crises with Communist involvement do erupt, our purpose should generally be to:

(a) Avoid any net loss for our interests and use the crises, if this can be done within the limitations outlined under (b) and (c), below, for modestly increasing our power position vis-à-vis the Communists;

(b) Close out the crises as quickly and with as little violence as consistent with avoiding any net loss for our interests;

(c) Avoid being moved either by rising tensions or by the importunities of our allies or of our own public to prolong and expand the crises in an effort to inflict dramatic humiliation on the Communists.

Since we must expect a series of crises which the Communists will systematically seek to exploit, it is essential that we not reward this Communist technique by diverting our attention and energies from the long-term policies and enterprises on which, ultimately, the success of the free community and its invulnerability to Communist probes depends. We must, therefore, try to meet immediate threats in ways which, if possible, reinforce the long-term direction of our policy and minimize the diversionary consequences of our reactions to these threats. Thus, the Berlin crisis may be used to help resolve the debate on the role of conventional and nuclear forces in NATO; and the Vietnamese crisis may be used to increase the degree of mutual involvement and support among non-Communist nations in Asia.

It should be noted that we have generally been at a disadvantage in crises, since the Communists command a more flexible set of tools for imposing strain on the Free World—and greater freedom to use them—than we normally do. We are often caught in circumstances where our only available riposte is so disproportionate to the immediate provocation that its use risks unwanted escalation or serious political costs to the free community. This asymmetry makes it attractive for Communists to apply limited debilitating pressures upon us in situations where we find it difficult to impose on them an equivalent price for their intrusions. We must seek, therefore, to expand our arsenal of limited overt and covert countermeasures if we are in fact to make crisis-mongering, deeply built into Communist ideology and working habits, an unprofitable occupation.

8. The Diffusion of Power and US-Soviet Relations. One of the historical trends which may in time lead to widened areas of US-USSR understanding and common action warrants special policy attention, i.e., the diffusion of power and authority away from Moscow, within the Communist Bloc, and away from the US, within the free community. This process presents to both sides the possibility of situations arising in which either a Soviet or an American ally may try to inflame a given situation and thus engage to its own benefit the prestige of the two major powers. To prevent any such situation from arising and leading to an unsought dangerous direct confrontation should be one of the specific and priority purposes of meaningful US-USSR communication.

The form of diffusion of power potentially most serious to both the Soviet Union and the US is the spread of nuclear weapons. We have thus far failed to achieve a Soviet-US understanding on the test ban treaty which might have damped the pressure for the extension of nuclear weapons; and evident Soviet interest in further weapons development, together with the attitudes of Communist China and France, make an effective test ban problematic. Nevertheless, the US-Soviet interest in control over nuclear capabilities of third parties remains a potential area for understanding and agreement in the long run; we should continue to seek a test ban; and other approaches to agreements which would limit the possibility of diffusion of nuclear weapons should be explored.

9. The Possibility of a Partial Detente. For a long time to come it is improbable that mutual awareness of common interests will lead to a cessation of conflict between the US and the USSR. Nevertheless, there may be (and it is in our interest that there should be) agreements on specific issues and, in certain circumstances perhaps, periods in which Communist pressures abate.

We should try to use such periods to build up the habit of meaningful US-Soviet communication, dampen outstanding crises, work toward safeguarded arms control agreements, and move forward with the long-term policies mentioned in paragraph 11, below. While we should welcome temporary and partial accommodations or détentes with the USSR, we should not be diverted by them from our long-term strategy. We must seek to indoctrinate our own peoples and the peoples of the free community with a deeper understanding of the issues at stake, emphasizing that while the existence of a Communist regime in the USSR (or China) is not, in itself, an appropriate cause of war, we must be prepared to struggle for a very long time against the attempts of those regimes to impose their systems on other countries. At the same time, we should take account of the playback effects of our statements and actions and seek to avoid unnecessary increases in tensions between the two sides, which will render more difficult the process of communication in crises and non-crisis situations and project to the free community an erratic image of US purposes.

10. Negotiation. We must not allow an excessive preoccupation with East-West negotiations, any more than partial détentes, to shift the main focus of our policy from the building and defense of the free community. We should, therefore, (i) avoid over-dramatizing either the likelihood that negotiations will succeed or the consequences of their failure; (ii) maintain a posture in negotiations which suggests that they are a businesslike attempt to reduce the risk of war, avoiding meaningless camaraderie and gestures which imply a more radical change in basic attitude than the realities of the East-West relationship would justify; and (iii) resist pressures for inflating the level of negotiation beyond what is substantively useful.

To maintain this balance, we should seek to avoid formal Summit negotiations of the 1955 variety, except where needed business cannot otherwise be transacted. One such case may be where the full authority of the heads of government is needed to halt a chain of military action and counteraction leading straight to war. And there may be instances in which a willingness to proceed to negotiations at the Summit would help consummate a useful agreement. We should seek to develop more informal contacts and exchanges between the President and the top Soviet leadership which would—unlike Summit meetings—be viewed more as a forum for communication than negotiation.

11. Exploitation of Long-Term Trends. Our long-term purpose toward the Soviet Union is to increase the chance of constructive evolution within that society which might eventually move it to participate in the community of free nations. The natural forces of fragmentation within the Communist Bloc, combined with certain trends within Soviet society itself, make this long-run hope not wholly illusory. On the other hand, the commitment to expansion and the habits and institutions geared to Communist expansion are deeply ingrained; and, therefore, we cannot permit these long-run hopes to lower the level of alertness of our defenses, nor should we work along these lines with any hope of early, dramatic success.

Nevertheless, these historical forces are real enough for us to move in the directions indicated below.

None of this may be productive. Clearly we do not have such a good chance of success through such efforts that we can relax our efforts in other directions. We cannot expect Soviet society, which is also Russian society, to lose quickly the hostile and dangerous features that stem from the Communist philosophy and Russian history. But our effort to build a community of free nations would be incomplete if it did not include some steady, patient efforts towards this long-term goal:

a. We should maintain continuing pressure on the USSR to expand exchanges of persons on equitable terms and to reduce restrictions on the flow of information, and we should exploit to the maximum opportunities in this field which are open to us. It may be somewhat difficult for Soviet leaders to maintain a stable repressive system in the face of widening exposure to outside influence.

b. We should press for cooperative ventures in such fields as outer space, Antarctica, public health, and peaceful uses of atomic energy. Such ventures might give the Soviets an expanding vested interest in respectability and perhaps even induce some of their officials to think increasingly in terms of business-like dealings with the West on matters of mutual national advantage.

c. To the extent consistent with our national interests, we should grant to the USSR the position its status as a great power warrants. We should also hold out, by word and deed, the prospect that if the Soviet leaders ever show a genuine interest and will for constructive participation in the community of free nations, this possibility is not automatically precluded. This will not change the basic policy of Soviet leaders now in power, but it may have some moderating effects on their conduct, or that of their successors. It may also make it that much more difficult for the Soviet leadership to persuade its people that any change in the Soviet external posture is precluded by relentless Western hostility.

C. The Eastern European Countries

12. The Ultimate Aim. The basic fact about Eastern Europe is that, beneath the surface of Communist domination, the Communists have failed to win over any substantial proportion of the people to their side. The underlying dissidence of the area and its potential instability constitute a constraint on Soviet aggressiveness and a basis for long run hope that the free community might be extended beyond its present European limits. We wish to see these nations of Eastern Europe eventually become members of the free community of nations by a process of peaceful evolution. Leaving aside the possibility of chaotic disruption of the Communist Bloc, generated out of its own dynamics or a major war, the likelihood of their doing so will hinge largely on the emergence of a Soviet policy which would make acceptable to Moscow a protection of Russian security interests by means other than intimate Moscow domination of the inner political life of the presently Communist states. In turn, this result depends on: a conviction in Moscow that the West will remain strong and unified; a continued failure of Communism in Eastern Europe to attract the loyalty of its citizens; a persistence of the historic attraction of Western Europe in the East; and an evolution of Soviet society towards a policy at once less imperialistic and more concentrated on problems of Russian welfare. At best, all of this will, evidently, require time; and the outcome is not pre-ordained. Nevertheless, it is in the U.S. interest to encourage this historical process; and the balance of this section discusses certain limited means for its promotion.

13. The Policy of Penetration. We should try to widen contacts between the peoples of Eastern Europe and the West at every level. Such contacts will bring home in some way, however muted, the message that history does not inevitably decree that Moscow will forever dominate their lives. That message may encourage those peoples to press their governments, insofar as they safely can, for gradual internal liberation and for steps toward greater national independence.

14. Relations with the Eastern European Regimes. Contacts between the West and peoples under Communist rule will generally depend on the consent of their governments. That consent will hinge, in part, on the nature and apparent intent of the contacts which are being proposed. Our contacts with Eastern Europe should not, therefore, appear to these governments to reflect an intent to create dramatic political changes in Eastern Europe.

When occasions arise on which our silence might be misinterpreted, however, we should make clear that the community of free nations is intended, in the long run, to include the peoples of Eastern Europe, and we should not hesitate to articulate our faith that history is on the side of national self-determination in that region as elsewhere.

Our contacts with Eastern Europe may also depend, in part, on how strongly the U.S. is criticizing the regime in question. Our experience with Hungary has shown the difficulty, at least in this case, of expanding our cultural, information and economic penetration into a satellite country while simultaneously strongly castigating its government. While we cannot be expected to endorse or applaud these governments, there may be certain occasions when it will be in our long-run interest somewhat to mute official attacks at least temporarily. This balance of interests is a delicate one, but it must be made; its results may well vary from case to case.

Moreover, the nature of the contacts themselves must be carefully assessed. In some cases, the interests of the U.S. and the Communist regime clearly converge; e.g., in programs for training young government officials in the West. In other cases, the Communist regimes clearly intend to acquire information while insulating the officials involved from corrupting Western contacts; e.g., in certain scientific and technical contacts. Here again a careful calculus of the net advantage to the U.S. must be made.

15. Relations Between Eastern and Western Europe. Western Europe has a special role to play in this process. As its integration and economic progress proceeds, Western Europe’s pull will increasingly be felt in Eastern Europe. We should encourage and assist the Western European nations to exploit any tendencies toward closer relations with the West among the Eastern Europeans and should, so far as practicable, endeavor to develop mutually supporting programs for peaceful penetration.

16. Special Cases Among Communist Regimes. Within this general framework, our policies toward East European countries should be modulated individually to meet variations in the opportunities to achieve our aims.

a. Poland and Yugoslavia offer special opportunities. It is our interest that Poland maintain as much freedom from Soviet control as possible; that Yugoslavia preserve at least its present independence; and that both evolve domestic politics and institutions which give enlarged freedom of individual choice to their citizens. We should be prepared to furnish limited economic aid to these ends, and we should increasingly encourage Western European nations to do the same, bearing in mind, however, that both economies are now beyond the stage where substantial aid—except possibly for foodstuffs—is justified.

b. Albania is a special case, although it reflects a deeper more fundamental situation: the progressive assertion of differing—not to say divergent—interests by the national Communist parties within the Bloc. It is in our interest that the breach between Albania and the USSR continue. Ultimately, we should hope that Albania would return to the community of free nations. For the time being, however, our interests would be best served by Albania’s remaining a bone of contention between Communist China and the USSR, while stabilizing a position of independence in Europe and improving its relations with Italy, Greece, and Yugoslavia.

c. East Germany is a problem of particular importance. To indicate that we regard the division of Germany as permanent would be to shake West German confidence in the West and thus jeopardize effective German participation in the European and Atlantic Communities. On the other hand, it will probably not be possible to insulate ourselves from dealings with the East German regime over the long term. Such dealings need not preclude ultimate reunification, and might, if effectively conducted, accelerate the process.

In line with this assessment, we should not grant official recognition to East Germany, nor expect the West Germans to do so. We should be prepared to do business with the East German regime, as the need arises, on a technical level—much as the West Germans do. We should encourage the West Germans to take a more forthcoming and confident view of such relationships between the U.S. and East Germany, and to expand rather than contract their own contacts with the East Germans. We should make clear our dedication to German unity, our expectation that it will come about, and our belief that it can best be achieved by peaceful processes based on the growing attractiveness of association with the free community.

17. Uprisings in Eastern Europe. If revolts break out in East Germany or any other satellite, we should bear in mind that our grand design is to build a community of free nations which will expand by its inner strength and attractive power when combined with the assertion of increasingly nationalist trends within the Communist Bloc. We do not wish to jeopardize this design by causing Eastern Europe to become a battlefield between ourselves and the USSR, unless we are attacked. Accordingly:

(a) We should refrain from encouraging or supporting armed uprisings, as distinct from peaceful demonstrations, strikes, and similar means of exerting public pressures against Communist regimes.

(b) If turbulence erupts in the area, we should maintain a posture of restraint, and urge our allies to do the same, meanwhile exerting all the influence we can muster during such crises to yield less repressive and more nationalist regimes as the outcome.

(c) Should a non-Communist or national Communist regime be established we should make a maximum effort short of military action to assist its survival.

While these guidelines should govern our actions toward Eastern Europe, we require capabilities which would permit us to choose whether to adopt a more active policy in the event either: (i) Bloc aggression has created circumstances in which we had decided to apply counterpressure in order to halt Communist aggressive armed initiatives in Europe or possibly elsewhere: (ii) forces beyond our control had created such widespread and prolonged chaos in Eastern Europe that an active U.S. role seemed likely to involve less risk of general nuclear war than a passive one.

D. Cuba

18. Basic Considerations. It is our interest that the control of international Communism over Cuba be eliminated and an independent Cuba returned to the OAS.

Cuba represents a special case of Communist penetration of the community of free nations through the capture of an indigenous and popularly accepted revolution. For the first time, the Sino-Soviet Bloc is openly in a league with a Communist government thousands of miles from its perimeter. While distance and the personality of Fidel Castro present some problems for the Sino-Soviet Bloc, Cuba is a useful and willing instrument of Bloc foreign policy and as such poses a series of potential and active threats to the peace and security of the hemisphere:

(i) a potential threat as a Communist offensive nuclear base against the U.S.;

(ii) a potential threat as a Communist offensive base for limited non-nuclear aggression against Latin American nations;

(iii) a current threat as a base for indirect aggression against Latin American nations;

(iv) a current threat as an example of the possibility of creating and holding a nation under Communist rule in this Hemisphere, enflaming and strengthening the Communist forces and their allies in Latin American nations.

19. Action. Contingency plans should exist against (i) and (ii). Existing efforts to counter (iii) should be pursued at high priority and with great urgency, and contingency plans should exist for action on the basis of OAS resolutions if firm evidence of Cuban involvement in indirect aggression is established. The threat of (iv) increases the urgency of the Alliance for Progress program and of the effort to detach the political movement for progress and reform in Latin America from Communist influence.

E. Communist China

20. The Situation. The situation of Communist China can be characterized essentially as follows:

a. The Chinese Communists have pursued an internal policy designed to give them, in the shortest possible period of time, the domestic resources required for great power status on the world scene. That effort, which was marked by numerous management shortcomings and which systematically neglected the human incentives and technical requirements for Chinese agriculture, yielded in 1961–62 a major crisis damaging to the industrial and foreign exchange position of Communist China and its military potential, as well as to its food supplies.

b. In the face of this crisis the Chinese Communists are, at the moment, seeking to maintain a position of fully independent authority and leadership within the Communist Bloc. They are in conflict with Moscow on military policy, economic policy, control over other Communist parties, and on basic ideological issues as well.

c. While thus weakened at home and engaged in a deadly serious political struggle with Moscow, they are maintaining their aggressive stance toward the U.S. and supporting pressure on the free community at a number of points in South and Southeast Asia, as well as less directly through their influence on other Communist parties. On the other hand, they have increased substantially their trade agreements with other parts of the free community.

d. In general, they have made clear that in the face of their present difficulties they do not intend to surrender any of their essential policy positions with respect to either Moscow or Washington. They have not been prepared to make any significant sacrifice of major political and strategic objectives to increase their chances of entering the UN or to acquire food supplies from the U.S. or the West.

21. The Stick. It is not clear whether a Chinese Communist state will ever evolve which is willing to live in reasonable harmony within the free community; if that evolution should take place, it will be a slow and uncertain process. We may be able to enhance the chances of such evolution by making clear to Peiping, Moscow, and friendly countries that our objectives in the Far East are the same as elsewhere: We will use force to deter or deal with the Chinese Communists’ military or indirect aggression wherever it occurs; we will not otherwise ourselves initiate aggression against Communist China; but we may not be content to meet Chinese Communist harassments of the free community, if these harassments expand, wholly within the borders of that community. The programs suggested elsewhere in this paper will give us a capability for directly harassing Communist China if Chinese Communist aggression should expand; any proposals for specific enterprises should be carefully judged, however, in the event of such expanded Chinese Communist aggression, with respect to risk and to their net consequences for the national interest.

22. The Carrot. Concurrently, we should leave ajar possibilities for expanding commercial, cultural and other contacts with Communist China, by making clear that the bar to the entrance of Communist China into more normal relations with the U.S. is its basic unwillingness to modify its present aggressive policies. The specific kinds of modification that we would require as the price of more normal relations should be geared to our national interests in the Far East.

Thus, within the framework of current policy, and as part of our effort to build a community of free nations we should, as opportunity affords, move towards a posture vis-à-vis Communist China which will place the onus for continued hostility squarely on Peiping and keep open the possibility that, at some future time, Chinese Communist authorities might opt for a policy of less hostility and greater relative dependence on the West.

Since the present Chinese Communist leadership has a vested interest in having the U.S. appear to the world at large and to its own populace as implacably hostile, we cannot now expect it to cooperate with U.S. efforts towards the ends outlined above. That being so, we must place primary reliance on U.S. actions which are unilateral, in the sense that they would advance U.S. interests in the absence of a ChiCom response. For example:

a. Avoiding provocations, which do not increase the strength of the U.S. and the community of free nations relative to Communist China.

b. Pursuing informal negotiations with Communist China on specific matters of mutual concern, as in the Geneva and Warsaw talks from 1955 on, if needs emerge and opportunity affords.

c. Opposing Communist China’s entrance into the UN in ways which make Communist China’s non-inclusion appear to be the result of Peiping’s unwillingness to accept reasonable conditions, rather than U.S. intransigeance.

The stance suggested by these actions should have the short-term effect of making clear where responsibility for the impasse with Communist China lies. Over the long run it is barely possible—no more—that it might contribute to the emergence of more moderate policies if a deepening of Communist China’s difficulties in feeding its populace and building the industrial base for world power should result in a leadership split or change of regime. In this context it should be borne in mind that the present leadership is aging; that the pressures of the Sino-Soviet dispute are severe; and in the 1960’s, the passing from the scene of Mao and the first generation of Chinese Communist leadership may conceivably signal a period of re-orientation in Chinese political and international life—for good or ill.

23. Taiwan and Communist China. To gain support for U.S. policy in an area where it is now somewhat unilateral, as well as to advance long run U.S. interests:

a. We should use our influence and aid to promote the emergence on Taiwan of a political process increasingly based on popular consent, and to support economic development on an effective long-term basis.

b. We should work, within the limits which a useful relationship with the GRC will allow, for a dampening-down of the GRC-Chinese Communist civil war. It remains an objective of U.S. policy: (i) to disengage U.S. and GRC prestige from the defense of the offshore islands, if and when this can be done without damage to our position in the Far East; (ii) to persuade the GRC through means which include aid and support for its position on Taiwan; either to withdraw its forces from the islands or to regard the islands as outposts, to be garrisoned in accordance with the requirements of outpost positions, again if and when this can be done without damage to our position in the Far East. We should periodically review the situation to determine whether action to these ends would on balance, serve the national interest—taking into account both the continuing costs and risks of our present position concerning the offshore islands and the psychological effects of a change in that position on the Western Pacific area. We should not disengage in circumstances which would make of this action a signal of U.S. weakness, which would encourage the Communists to further aggression and discourage Asian resistance to such aggression. If there is to be a disengagement from the offshore islands, there might be some advantage in completing it before Communist China detonates a nuclear device (possibly 1963, but more likely 1964), since thereafter it might appear to be a response to Peiping’s nuclear progress. The considerations involved here are so delicate, and so difficult to judge in advance, that the issue remains, as it has been for seven years, one which the President must judge in the light of circumstances as they evolve.

c. We should make plain our enduring commitment to sustain and defend a free government on Taiwan. We should make clear how, in our view, that government can most effectively influence the Overseas Chinese, and how it can best present itself on the world scene as an attractive counter to the Chinese Communist regime over the long term; and we should actively encourage, from the present forward, intensification of constructive ties between Taiwan and other nations, notably in Asia.

24. The Sino-Soviet Split. These measures may enhance free world cohesion, but it is unlikely that they will prevent Communist China from continuing over the long term to grow in power and from acquiring, perhaps in the relatively near future, a nuclear capability.

This growth of Chinese Communist power may be slowed if the Sino-Soviet split persists at its present level of intensity, since the USSR has apparently reduced sharply its economic and technical assistance to Communist China, refused to provide nuclear weapons or modern, long-range delivery vehicles, and curbed the release of information on nuclear technology and weapons production. Both directly and indirectly (in terms of assurance of Soviet support), the split may, at least in the short run, decrease Communist Chinese expansionist capabilities—even as it inclines the Chinese to argue within the Communist world the advantages of a more aggressive ideological and foreign policy stance.

The long-run implications of a Sino-Soviet split are even more important. It could give rise to increased factionalism in national Communist parties, weaken the overall thrust of world Communism, and facilitate the emergence of more independent and nationalistic Communist states, especially in Eastern Europe. Although the USSR might be driven by these trends to adopt a somewhat intransigent foreign policy, it is likely that it will at least experiment with a more accommodating policy toward the West, thereby opening up new opportunities for Western initiatives. Thus a Sino-Soviet split—despite the possibilities of competition in aggressiveness as between Moscow and Peiping—is definitely in the U.S. interest and in the interest of the free community.

25. U.S. Exploitation of the Split. Although there is little that the U.S. can do to promote that split, we should at least avoid measures which might have the effect of healing it. We should, thus, not so openly favor Khrushchev’s point of view vis-a-vis the Chinese Communists as to make it difficult for him to justify it within the Communist camp. We should—in the context of the Sino-Soviet dispute as well as for larger reasons—be prepared to encourage Khrushchev’s stated preference for negotiation and peaceful settlements over war—but only when, indeed, Khrushchev acts in terms of that enunciated preference. And we should make clear, by deeds as well as words, that any contrary Chinese view is likely to prove unrewarding and self-defeating—recognizing that the character of the Sino-Soviet debate over “Wars of National Liberation” makes it critically important that South Viet-Nam maintain its independence and that the present North Viet-Nam offensive be frustrated.

We should not become so fascinated with the Sino-Soviet split, however, as to lose sight of the larger prospect: that both states, whether closely knit or not, will continue to wax in strength, and that both will be basically hostile to us though perhaps in different degrees and in different ways. The only effective means of offsetting this prospect will be a continuing build-up of free world strength and cohesion, combined with efforts, when this is in the national interest, to isolate and consolidate any particular areas of overlapping interest between Communist states and the free community which may emerge. That is, in essence, the course proposed in this paper.

E. Economic Policy Towards the Communist Bloc

26. General. U.S. economic policy towards the Communist Bloc should be a function of the general policy objectives outlined in this Chapter: frustrating Sino-Soviet expansionism, intensifying peaceful penetration of the Bloc countries, and attracting those countries into closer association with a strong and closely-knit free community. Thus, the U.S. should, so far as is practicable and consistent with the U.S. national interest, encourage expanded economic contacts between East and West, and Bloc participation in international economic organizations in any cases where there is evidence that this participation would be constructive. At the present time—and notably in the light of the actively aggressive Chinese Communist posture towards South and Southeast Asia and Taiwan—this policy is evidently not applicable with respect to Peiping, and it is not applicable to Cuba.

27. Policy on Bloc Trade and Aid. Within this context:

a. We should oppose economic relations between the Communist Bloc and the free community which directly increase the net military strength of the Bloc, narrowly defined. We should seek a coordinated allied or NATO program for utilization of economic sanctions in cases involving overt or covert aggression by Communist nations.

b. We should take steps to avoid excessive dependence of particular nations of the free community on Bloc aid, trade, or services (e.g. shipping and airlines); and where such dependence develops beyond our control we should prepare contingency arrangements which would prevent Communist exaction of a political price by threatening to reduce the flow of Bloc trade, aid or service.

c. We should oppose, and where practicable preclude, Bloc technical assistance which would influence particularly susceptible groups in the underdeveloped countries (such as students, educators, labor unions, and so forth) or which would give the Bloc control or major influence over particularly sensitive sectors of the national life, such as communications, transportation, public administration, education, etc.

d. We should maintain a regular watch for occasions where Soviet commercial policy, by dumping or other means, threatens to disrupt essential Free World economic arrangements and be prepared to design and mount appropriate countermeasures. We should seek coordinated NATO programs for the accomplishment of tasks (b), (c), and (d)—and thus for preventing countering, checking, or limiting economic penetration and subversion of the less developed countries.

e. Within these four important limits, we should be prepared to encourage normal trade between the Bloc and the free community as part of the process of national involvement of Communist nations in the life of the free community. The present and foreseeable proportions of Bloc to non-Bloc trade and aid within the free community suggests that over-all this policy offers—with the exceptions noted above—more potentially significant advantages then dangers.

F. Communism as a Revolutionary Force

28. The International Aspects of Communism. Aside from the threat of Soviet or Chinese Communist expansionism, and its nationalist appeal on the issue of colonialism, there are two other aspects of Communism which merit attention: its ideological appeal, and its potentiality as a revolutionary force.

(a) Ideology: To some individuals and groups: Communism certainly carries intrinsic, if deceptive, appeals: an all-encompassing ideology, a concept—however hypocritical—of professed service to humanity, a system of organization and a strategy for attaining political power, a coherence and unity which may serve to prevent social fragmentation, an apparent example and a method of economic progress, and an authoritarianism which the Communists portray as the best way of making that progress. Communism may thus appeal to such groups and individuals because it provides a structured philosophy of life and action within which they can feel at home, because it may appear to them to be the best and swiftest way to organize and guide underdeveloped countries in the process of modernization, and because it purports to represent, in power terms, the “wave of the future” to which it is wise for men and governments to accommodate.

(b) Revolutionary Force: These appeals not only facilitate the extension of Sino-Soviet influence but enable indigenous Communists, with or without the support of the USSR or Communist China, to build up revolutionary organizations inside the countries of the free world.

Both these aspects of Communism must be dealt with, but in quite different ways.

29. The Suppression of International Communism as a Revolutionary Force. The efforts of the Communists to build up local parties, to infiltrate and weaken local governments, and to organize for internal political or paramilitary action can be checked in part, if the governments concerned employ effective intelligence and police methods, make use of countersubversive techniques, issue counterpropaganda, and adopt measures to expose the extra-national ties of the indigenous Communist parties. The U.S. should assist discreetly in these efforts by making available information about international Communism; by providing training in essential counter-intelligence, counter-subversive and police techniques; and by aiding in the development of effective information programs, overt and covert. It should also endeavor to guide indigenous police activities so that they bear upon the international Communist movement, and not upon bona fide opposition elements which are authentically national in their origins and orientation.

30. Ideology: However, the fundamental way to diminish the importance of Communism as a revolutionary force must be to sap its ideological sources of strength by strengthening and improving the performance of the free community in its defensive and constructive tasks. There is no doubt that the goal of the pluralistic community, based upon consent in relationship within and as among nations, commends itself, on balance, more than monolithic conformity to most of mankind.

Communist methods violate the personality of men and of nations; and perception of this fact grows with the passage of time. Despite its appeals, Communism encounters deep human and cultural resistances. Moreover, the institutions of Western democracy have been grafted upon many non-Western societies, and in some cases they have begun slowly to take hold. If we fail of support among free peoples, it will not be because we are moving in what most men consider to be the wrong direction. The ideas and ideals of democracy have wide popular appeal—even among peoples in Communist countries, and even in societies where democratic practice does not effectively match democratic aspiration. If, in fact, we succeed in binding up the northern nations of the world in an effective military and economic coalition; if we prove capable of dealing with various forms of Communist aggression on the frontiers of the Free World; if we make significant and self-evident progress in tasks of construction in the underdeveloped southern half of the Free World, the power of these Communist appeals will wane—notably if the process of fragmentation of the Communist Bloc proceeds and the Communists persist in agricultural policies in underdeveloped areas under their control which slow economic growth, and which leave men hungry as well as trapped within police-state systems.

In addition, purposeful efforts should be made to project effectively the following specific themes:

a. The U.S. and its associates command the resources and the will to deal with any foreseeable Communist military aggression.

b. The techniques, resources and policies of the free community offer the opportunity for effective modernization while preserving the independence of nations and a continuity with their historic past and unique ambitions.

c. Communism is, in both its techniques and its historical vision, an old-fashioned and reactionary doctrine unsuited to the conditions of the second half of the twentieth century, and the abiding lesson of history is that an international community is most solidly built by the consent of sovereign governments representing a diversity of creeds and systems, just as a stable national society must rest on the consent of individuals judged and treated as dignified, responsible, and unique.

d. The underlying humane cultural heritage of nations now under Communist sway still exists and has vitality; and we are confident that, with the passage of time, it will grow in strength and yield changes in Communist societies which will draw them towards the free community.

V. THE DOMESTIC BASE

A. Introduction

1. Purpose. The fundamental purpose of our policy is to provide a world environment which will permit our own society to continue to develop in continuity with its past; but the creation, maintenance, and development of this environment demands much of our economy, our political process, and of the American people themselves. The success of the strategy developed in this paper thus depends on the capacity of the U.S. to sustain a performance at home which reaches deeply into our domestic arrangements and which requires widespread understanding and assumption of responsibility and sacrifice for public purposes by our people.

B. The Economic Base

2. The strength of the American economy is fundamental to the policy incorporated in this paper. The task over the foreseeable future is to reconcile the following basic national objectives in ways which minimize direct government intervention in the economy:

(a) Relatively full and well-sustained levels of employment;

(b) A growth rate sufficient to meet the domestic and security requirements of our people;

(c) A balance of payments position adequate to support the overseas expenditures necessary for national security;

(d) A stable price level.

3. The Growth Rate. A high rate of economic growth is required of the American economy in the foreseeable future, not because rapid growth itself has inherent virtue but for three quite particular reasons:

(a) The U.S. must command a flow of resources which will permit it to deal with its military and other responsibilities on the world scene;

(b) The flow of increasing resources must, if at all compatible with national security, provide for an improvement in the standard of life and the quality of our domestic arrangements;

(c) An environment of rapid growth and relatively full employment is necessary if the U.S. is to generate rates of investment and plant modernization required for the maintenance of our competitive position and to play our part in adjusting to the trading requirements of the evolving free community: specifically, to permit an acceptance of trade on a liberal basis among the industrialized countries of the north and the absorption of an increasing flow of both raw materials and manufactures from the developing countries of the south. It is difficult to make the needed allocation of resources to international purposes or liberal trade adjustments in an environment of slow growth and chronic unemployment.

4. Allocation of Resources. Within the framework of a high rate of growth and of sustained low levels of unemployment the U.S. must be prepared to allocate, for purposes of defense and construction within the free community, an enlarging flow of resources. Unless the arms race is brought under early control the cost of effective deterrence systems and of their development is likely to increase; and over the decade of the 1960’s legitimate requirements for assistance to underdeveloped areas will expand if our policies—which aim to increase their capacity to mobilize their own resources and to absorb productively resources from abroad—are successful.

5. Full Employment. Sustained and significant unemployment will not only make it difficult, as indicated, to make the resource allocations needed to carry out this strategy; it may also sap political morale and cohesion in a degree that would hinder its execution. This will be particularly true if the burden of that unemployment is concentrated in specific individuals, groups, or areas over long periods of time. In addition to the broader programs for stimulating growth referred to above, specific measures should be devised and pressed as a matter of high priority in order to alleviate this burden—both on the country as a whole and on the specific groups and persons who have borne it longest. Retraining, relocation, counseling, education—all these should be promoted with the special procedures, talent, and resources that we reserve for matters of the greatest importance to the future security of our country.

6. Balance of Payments. The ability of the United States to maintain the policy of leadership in the free community laid down in this paper requires that we continue to generate a large and regular balance of payments surplus in our commercial accounts. The expansion and appropriate allocation of American resources—at home and overseas—cannot be achieved unless the U.S. surmounts the chronic pressure which now operates on our balance of payments position. This in turn requires:

(a) An increase in the productivity of the American economy in the major export fields and in certain older domestic industries which absorb large amounts of national resources but which have not acquired a satisfactory capacity to generate and to absorb the fruits of modern research and development—e.g., transport, construction, steel, and so forth.

(b) Wage policies which are accommodated (with appropriate flexibility in individual industries) to the average national increase in productivity.

(c) Price policies which are geared to both domestic and international competition.

(d) Systematic efforts to increase American foreign exchange earnings via tourism and exports.

(e) International measures designed to economize the free community’s gold and currency reserves in the face of the radical expansion in the world trade and to ensure against short-term disruptive movements of U.S. gold and foreign holdings.

(f) Execution of overseas responsibilities in ways that minimize their cost to the U.S. balance of payments, and insofar as feasible, do not penalize the individual Americans involved in our operations abroad.

(g) Use of sustained diplomatic pressure to induce more industrialized nations of the free community enjoying surplus positions to cooperate in reducing pressure on the U.S. balance of payments.

C. The Political Base

7. Knowledge, Poise, and Confidence. But more than a full and discriminating use of the nation’s human and material resources and a large, stable export surplus are required. For Americans to live with poise in a world of continuing danger, amidst an inevitable series of crises, under circumstances where progress is bound to be slow and unsensational, requires that a purposeful and sustained effort be made better to acquaint the Congress and people with the contours of the world in which we live, of the positive objectives we intend to pursue, and of progress—even limited progress—towards those objectives.

Specifically, we should within the minimum limits of national security, attempt to explain with candor the nature of the arms race and the problem of arms control; the inevitability of multiple crises in a world of new nations disengaging or newly disengaged from colonialism, experiencing simultaneously the vicissitudes of modernizing their social and political arrangements as well as their economies, and subjected to systematic Communist efforts to exploit this environment; and the inadequacy of traditional approaches to the solution of international problems. Finally we must project a sense that in this sea of danger and of trouble we have our own positive purposes and operational sense of direction. This exposition should not be merely in general terms, but in forms sufficiently precise so that step-by-step practical movement forward is recognized and understood. We must generate a national perspective such that we confront the 1960’s with a posture of national poise and confidence, and with a sense of forward movement towards well-understood objectives.

The systematic exposition of the main lines of policy laid down in this paper, in forms appropriate for public presentation, is one means to this end.

8. The Projection Abroad of U.S. Purposes. It is also essential to project abroad a more clear and vivid concept of our aims and of the measures we are taking to move towards them. The understandable difficulties within a pluralistic society of developing and presenting such a concept make it all the more important that the government act consistently and with vigor to protect a positive image of U.S. intentions, as developed in this paper, and to dissipate the corrosive conception that our policy is defensive, negative, and reactive. The fundamental purpose of information policy abroad should be to dramatize the extent to which U.S. purposes and policies on the world scene overlap and harmonize with those of other peoples and governments. To this end, we should set forth to other peoples the broad goal laid out in this paper; that of creating an evolving community of free nations, in which these nations can fulfill their aspirations for progress, independence, and security more effectively than otherwise. If we can explain our varied and manifold actions in terms of this goal, other peoples may come to see the relation of these U.S. actions to each other and to their own interests; the confidence in U.S. leadership, sense of movement, and basic consensus on broad policy directives which are indispensable within the free community will be strengthened. In general, the purpose of U.S. information policy should be to define and to dramatize the limited but real areas of overlapping interest between the United States and other governments and peoples.

D. Other Elements of the National Base

9. Reference to Other Policy Papers. Many other elements enter into the development of a domestic base which can support U.S. national security policy: the scope and quality of education, the rate of growth of scientific knowledge and applied technology, the modernization and readiness of industrial facilities, etc.

Pending re-examination of policies with respect to these matters (some of which are already under way³), the following paragraphs of NSC 5906/1, Basic National Security Policy, remain in force, pending the review referred to below:

Para	Subject	Agencies Having Cognizance
57	Internal Security	Justice
59	Mobilization Base	OEP
60	Stockpiling	OEP
61	Intelligence	CIA
62	Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy	AEC
63	Outer Space	NASC
64	Manpower	Labor and HEW
65	Research and Development	Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology

Where these policies are outdated or inconsistent with the thrust of this paper, and are not under review, the cognizant agency or agencies will initiate such a review, for consideration by the National Security Council.

VI. A CONCLUSION

The policy set out here is, in its essence, quite simple. Our goal is to create an international community in which nations can cooperate to achieve their common purposes in freedom—and thus to help shape the world order that emerges from a half-century of war and revolution along lines that will be consistent with our national values and interests. To this end we aim to bind up in closer partnership the industrialized nations of Western Europe and the Pacific and to work with them to create a wider community of free nations, embracing Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. We aim to help create in this community an environment of material progress, peaceful reconciliation of differences, increasing social justice, and movement towards the norms of political democracy. We intend to defend this community against Communist aggression and to do so, if possible, in ways which will minimize the possibility that a nuclear war will come about; and we intend to draw the nations now under Communist regimes towards this community as opportunity may offer.

This policy will be pursued in a setting of hazard, tension, and crisis—the irreducible consequences of the weapons men now command; the fact of Communist ambition and power; and the revolutionary forces for change at work in the underdeveloped areas. It will be pursued under circumstances where the nation’s will and ability to defend the vital interests of this community in a nuclear age will be chronically tested; and the nation’s capacity to deal with swiftly changing circumstances—scientific and human—will be strained to the limit.

It is a policy which requires of us all a sustained combination of courage and circumspection; of initiative and patience; of resolute struggle against Communism and ability to work subtly with processes of change within the Communist bloc.

This policy promises no quick or cheap victory. It requires that we overcome powerful forces of resistance and inertia, if it is to move forward. But it intends that the principles of national independence and freedom shall, in time, peacefully triumph.

This is a policy we can pursue with deep inner confidence. It is consistent with powerful historical forces at work on the world scene; its demands fall well within the material resources available to us and the free community as a whole; and it is rooted in the oldest and most fundamental values and commitments of our society.

Time is on the side of the things our nation stands for, if we use time well.

1. “Basic National Security Policy.” Printed in part in the print volume as Document 93. Secret. 186 pp. Department of State, S/P Files: Lot 69 D 121, BNSP Draft 6/22/62.
2. That is, in cases where U.S. and allied strength is not sufficient—or could not be made sufficient, with a minor build-up—to permit defense against major assault without a time limit.
3. For example, the President has directed that an investigation be made of the program for the stockpiling of strategic materials (OEP Press Release, 12 Feb. 1962) and has ordered a review of emergency planning on the continuity of government (NSC Action Memo 127, 14 February 1962.)