306. Memorandum from Rostow to Members of Policy Planning Council, November 291
NOTIFICATION OF SECRETARY’S POLICY PLANNING MEETING, 10 A.M., TUESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1963, IN THE SECRETARY’S CONFERENCE ROOM
SUBJECT
- Comment on Key Issues Underlined by Assistant Secretaries
The extremely able and terse summaries of current key issues developed by the Bureaus speak for themselves. It may be useful to underline one general reflection on them, which arose directly from their reading.
1. In general they dramatize the fact that in all parts of the world we are positioned in rather delicate balance between hopeful trends and political degenerative forces. With one arm we are pressing forward, with the other we are fending off danger. Relatively small shifts in policy, emphasis, or energy could violate those balances and create major problems for us.
2. In Africa there is the balance between friendship towards black Africa set off against the dilemma posed for us by South Africa and Portuguese Africa. Here, aside from the passage of civil rights legislation, the maintenance of some marginal leverage on the radicals (Ben Bella, Kwame Nkrumah, and Sekou Toure), plus continued support for the moderates, appears essential if the whole of our African policy is not to be endangered.
3. With respect to Western Europe, any faltering in our loyalty to Atlantic partnership would, of course, strengthen de Gaulle’s hand and, at the same time, endanger the movements forward which we must make in both the Herter [Facsimile Page 2] round of negotiations and in European cooperation on the U.S. balance of payments problem, which, in turn, could wreck the foundations of Western defense. Our stance at the NATO meeting and the manner in which we deal with the impasse in the development of a NATO strategy are critical. The most intimate bilateral consultation with the Germans is the requirement for success at almost every point.
[Typeset Page 1375]4. In relations with Moscow, the critical issue appears to be whether we can keep the détente breathing—and, specifically, generate and negotiate a sufficiently persuasive package to compensate for the possible adverse reaction to the bilateral air agreement. The suggested elements are Soviet acceptance of our requirement for notification of and access to U.S. citizens detained in the USSR, plus the provision of a leased line teletype link to Moscow.
5. In the Middle East and Asia we confront the problem of maintaining delicate balances in the Arab-Israeli dispute and in the India-Pakistan affair. The need for balance in the case of the former is particularly important given the possible Jordan waters crisis in the spring or summer of 1964.
6. In the Far East we have a delicate balance in the Indonesian confrontation of Malaysia, as well as the two precarious military situations in Laos and Viet Nam.
7. In Latin America, again we have a problem of balance between the thrust of the Alliance for Progress and other elements of cohesion and the potential corrosiveness of both Latin American nationalism, exacerbated by Communist influence and pressures.
8. In the United Nations, all of these balances are reflected, but notably those in Africa and Asia; and the great issue is posed of the United Nations’ role in helping keep the balances on the constructive side via peace-keeping machinery.
[Facsimile Page 3]9. What I draw from this array (quickly and incompletely ticked off) is the need for us all, from the President on down, to perceive a general point that transcends any of these items; namely, that the President has come to responsibility at a time when we are working our way slowly through a whole set of major historical transitions: the transition of Africa from colonialism to responsibility; the transition of Western Europe from dependence to partnership; the transition of Russia, hopefully, from a vicious offensive to something like a stable, peaceful co-existence; the transition of the Middle East and South Asia from an obsession with post-colonial boundary issues, which have been the focus of the new nationalism, to a more stable maturity; in the Far East from the aggressive nationalism of Sukarno to an Indonesian concern with its domestic development; in old Indochina, hopefully, from limited probing aggression, sparked by Hanoi, to peace.
10. Every one of these balances is capable of being upset, if we falter or lose resoluteness in either pressing in the hopeful direction or in fending off potential degeneration. If the balances are upset, the U.S. could face major crises.
11. To see our way through these historical transitions will require that these balances be understood and that we be prepared to sweat [Typeset Page 1376] them out steadily; but it must always be remembered that the balances are dynamic. They do not maintain themselves without the steady application of energy to fend off evil and to promote the good.
12. It may be that if this general perspective on the bewildering array of specific situations we face could be widely understood and shared (assuming for the moment it is correct), we would be forwarder.
- Addresses input from regional bureaus on key issues. Secret. 4 pp. Department of State, S/P Files: Lot 70 D 199, Secretary’s PPMs.↩