134. Memorandum From the President’s Acting Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Komer) to President Johnson1
Staying Loose on China Policy. I’m convinced that China is fast becoming a major foreign and domestic issue again, and needs careful watching. Though I gather that the VP’s “hint” of flexibility was strictly his own (and rather premature, to say the least), why not let it serve as a sort of trial balloon?
To withdraw from what was rather grossly overplayed by the press would only start another debate with our VN critics, and also force us to eat crow later if, as Secretary Rusk has twice indicated, we may yet be forced to make a virtue of necessity and accept an adverse Chirep vote in the UNGA.
On the other hand, to start shifting our China policy now—before we’ve carefully assessed all the implications, would be risky. We still lack any firm feel for where the electorate stands, or for how our Vietnam enterprise might be affected.
Yet there may be a way to have our cake and eat it too. It is to move gradually to the same stance toward Peiping as we now have toward Hanoi—i.e., if these people will only stop their subversion and aggression and live peacefully with their neighbors, we are prepared to re-examine co-existing peacefully with them. It is not we who are isolating Red China, but Red China which is isolating itself. If we’re going to be [Page 274] forced to adjust our China policy sooner or later anyway, there is virtue in doing so in a way which puts the monkey on Peiping’s back.
I don’t want to overdo this prickly issue, only to urge the case for staying loose till we can sort it out better. Signs of US flexibility would offend Korea, the GVN, and above all Taiwan, but be quite a plus with most other friends. More important is whether such signs would tend to undermine our Vietnam stance or serve rather as a diversion protecting our Vietnam flank.
- Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Memos to the President, McGeorge Bundy. Confidential. A handwritten “L” on the source text indicates that the President saw it.↩