Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XXX, China

286. Memorandum From Alfred Jenkins of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant (Rostow)¹

Washington, November 8, 1967.

SUBJECT

• Comments on Professor Rowe’s ChiRep Study²

My reactions to this paper are definite and simple. It does the job it starts out to do well, but in my opinion does the wrong job:

1. The study attempts to gear our presumed inflexible rectitude to a supposedly safe mechanical automaticity. It is dangerous to do that in this matter, for it prejudices “for all time” judgment as to the U.S. interest.

2. The United States’ position on ChiRep has changed already with changing circumstances, and the time could come when it should change again. For years we simply opposed Chinese Communist entry, and that was that. More recently we have left our policy open-ended. We insist that the position of the GRC be maintained, but we are (or were last year) silent on some other implications. Furthermore, we are on record now as having favored a study group, and if the question arises again this year we may have trouble voting against the resolution—although we wish the issue would not come up.

3. I think we have placed things about right. This issue is too important for us to lose our flexibility on it. We may be faced with a markedly different situation next year.

4. I do not think we should show any “forward movement” on ChiRep this year. Last year, up until fall, a fairly good case could be made for cautious forward movement, provided we still supported the GRC’s position. Communist China was certainly no rose even then, but since the 1959 excesses of the Great Leap, creeping revisionism had brought from 1961 visions of a maturing of the Revolution on a vaguely Soviet pattern. That still does not produce a rose, but Brezhnevism is better than Stalinism. Last year there was increasing discomfort at ponderous China’s being unarticulated with the world. A case could be made up to last summer for attempting to further Peking’s processes of inching toward reasonableness in internal policies by hinting at alternatives externally—in the hopes that external policies too might “mature.” This especially made sense when it appeared that an alternative road could be dangled at Peking in a serious and instructive yet academic experiment—academic because we could almost certainly test reactions while ensuring that the political outcome of the problem would not be altered for at least a year or so. The following year, if we should want the practical outcome still not to be changed, this would doubtless be for reasons (primarily trends in the nature of the regime) which would strike others similarly, and we would not be taking an unreasonable calculated risk. (After all, in extremis, we could have our way with the veto.)

5. Since resumption of Maoism with a vengeance this fall, however, attempts to “further the process of reasonableness in Peking,” through major steps, would be doomed to failure and inexplicable to the public at home or abroad. The timing would be fatuous.

6. This does not mean that the dignified, general stand of (a) hostility only by provocation and not by definition, and (b) hope for eventual reconciliation should not be reiterated. It should be, sparingly.

7. As you know, it is my belief that the combination of our Vietnam stand and our stand of reasonableness vis-a-vis Communist China have helped crystalize China’s deep policy problems and differences, contributing to an indeterminate but real degree to hastening and exacerbating the troubles associated with the Cultural Revolution.

8. But no big gifts should be dangled now, such as involving the United Nations, freer trade invitations, etc.—not while the regime is weakened by bitter dissension, with change amounting to its virtual dissolution not completely unthinkable! Taking steps to further the maturation of the Revolution only makes sense when its maturation is proceeding along revisionist lines.

9. We should meticulously keep our UN position flexible within the basic judgment of what is good, at a given time, for U.S. interests and the health of the UN. We shall occasionally have to reach into the gimmick bag as we have in the past—and this paper is a creditable recitation of possibilities for gimmickry—but we should reach in sparingly.

10. This is the tread water year, in any event.

AJ

1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, China, Vol. XI. Secret. Copies were sent to Jorden and Davis.
2. The attached undated paper, entitled “The Status of China in the United Nations,” was prepared by a study group under the Scholarly Studies Program of the American-Asian Educational Exchange. It is filed with an undated covering memorandum from the group’s chairman, Professor David N. Rowe of Yale University. Eugene V. Rostow sent the package with a November 4 covering note to Walt Rostow, who gave it to Jenkins with a handwritten notation requesting his comments.