Foreign Relations of the United States, 1951, Korea and China, Volume VII, Part 1

S/P Files: Lot 64D563, Box 728

Memorandum on the Substance of Discussions at a Department of State–Joint Chiefs of Staff Meeting¹

top secret

Washington, September 25, 1951—4 p. m.

Present:

General Bradley	Mr. Nitze
General Collins	Mr. Bohlen
General Vandenberg	Mr. Rusk
Admiral Fechteler	Mr. Merchant
Admiral Davis	Mr. Ferguson
Admiral Lalor
Colonel Carns
General Bolte

General Bradley: We have been discussing the general principle of whether General Ridgway ever goes back to Kaesong or whether he will go back if he gets satisfactory conditions. We have also been discussing the idea of his putting forth his old proposal rather than a new one. Those are the things involved in his message.² There is a fourth point—with respect to an evaluation of the situation, and I don’t know whether we have anyone who can give him an evaluation of the attitude of the Communists toward an armistice. We feel that General Ridgway should not be made to go back to Kaesong unless he is satisfied with the conditions. You felt before that you would hate to see the negotiations fall down just because we would not go back to Kaesong.

Mr. Bohlen: The liaison officers have already gone to Kaesong and I am not clear just what guarantees General Ridgway wants.

General Vandenberg: His statement is that there are no guarantees that would work. Kaesong is a place where propaganda can continue to be made against us. He sees no way that guarantees can be enforced because of irregulars who could come in and raise hell.

General Bradley: In our message the other day we said that we recognized the inadvisability of Kaesong.³

Mr. Nitze: Has he made any suggestion as to an alternate site?

General Vandenberg: He suggested a Swedish (Danish?) hospital ship once before.

Mr. Nitze: On that ship we would be in charge of communications.

General Collins: The ship is gone and won’t be back for a month, so that is out.

Mr. Bohlen: I doubt if you would get them on any U.N. ship because they want their own communications.

General Collins: On the Imjin River you could put tents on both sides and each set up his own communications. The River is the front line. Possibly you could anchor a raft in the middle of the River or we could go to their side for discussion.

General Bradley referred to a General Ridgway message asking authority to insist on a new site. He then read our reply, which had gone out several days ago.³

General Bradley: One draft we had prepared here was to the effect that General Ridgway was authorized to inform the Communists that he would discuss conditions with the liaison officers.

Mr. Bohlen: Any site is going to have many of the same problems. Our thinking is along the line that the talks were broken off not so much because of the incidents but because the Communists have cooked up the incidents to embarrass the U.N. Command.

General Bradley: There has been no incident in which our people have been endangered, but General Ridgway now fears they will cook up something that will endanger our people. I agree with General Ridgway that with all that has gone on since August 23, they might try to harm our people.

Mr. Merchant: Won’t their high rank be a protection?

General Bradley: If we were on opposite sides of the river we would be in range to wipe them out if they tried anything.

Mr. Bohlen: We think they have shown a desire to have a meeting because they have something they want to say to Admiral Joy. We thought the proposal for a battle line as the median line would be a good proposal and if they are willing to get off the 38th parallel point, we will know it promptly. A new proposal given in writing, which they can forward to their principals, will give you the best answer to the question. I understand the liaison officers have not found anything different in the neutral zone since the talks were broken off. Raising great difficulties about the site, I think, would affect almost every point.

Mr. Nitze: The idea of isolating the questions into four points, as General Bradley did at the beginning of the meeting, is a good one. The question of the site and whether Admiral Joy goes to Kaesong is most difficult.

General Bradley: At least some of us here think that General Ridgway should come up with a new proposal on the line, but the site business has us worried.

Mr. Nitze: If you once go to Kaesong, it will be difficult to get it changed. If you once go, that is where the site is going to be.

General Collins: I wonder if the principals could meet on the River. If you could get the principals together, maybe you would get something. General Ridgway could suggest that pending clarification of the neutrality of the site the principals meet at Panmunjom.

Mr. Merchant: Is the bridge at the periphery of the neutral zone?

General Collins: Yes.

Mr. Bohlen: Would the bridge be in the line of flight of our aircraft?

General Collins: It could be avoided. It is much easier than avoiding a distance on either side of the road.

Mr. Nitze: I should think there would be less chance of air violation at a point so much nearer our line.

Mr. Rusk: My reactions are along the lines of General Collins. Should we have a discussion with General Ridgway about the conditions we would think satisfactory at any site? The main delegations could meet at the river and take up the question of arrangements.

General Bradley: I wonder if you will need any arrangement at the river.

Mr. Bohlen: You could do the two things simultaneously. You could have the liaison officers discuss the site and the principals could meet on substantive matters.

Mr. Nitze: It puts us in a much better propaganda position if we could suggest that the principals meet at Panmunjom.

General Collins: What might be done to get a more intimate idea of this matter is to set up a telecon with General Ridgway. We have been sending messages back and forth and no one quite understands the other.

General Vandenberg: We could have a telecon and after it ended get a directive and clear it.

General Collins: We can set up a telecon within an hour or two. If we ask for a telecon, General Ridgway will hold up everything. If we set one up for seven o’clock this evening, we would have time to get up draft questions and I think it would be profitable.⁴ If we possibly can get the principals to meet, that would be the important thing.

Mr. Bohlen: That is what we are interested in. If they have a chance to get back on the 38th parallel in the discussion, we won’t be able to put the thing in. Their reaction to our proposal will give us the best answer as to their intentions.

General Bradley: There is a great advantage in getting a proposal that narrows the issue and does not take territory away from the enemy. I think we should set up a telecon at seven o’clock.

General Vandenberg: Let us discuss our views here and then have only one or two from each side at the telecon.

General Bradley: Yes.

General Vandenberg: I think Bolte and Collins can do this if we discuss it here in advance.

General Collins: That is right, we can’t make a decision until afterwards anyway.

General Bradley: We will set it up at seven.

Mr. Bohlen then circulated the State Department’s proposed message to General Ridgway. (Attached)

General Bradley: With respect to the part of this draft that relates to Kaesong, I still have a question. I think the last part is a good idea.

General Vandenberg: Joe,⁵ my view is that General Ridgway has good substantive reasons for objecting to Kaesong and we should respect them, but I agree with the rest of this State Department’s message on the subject of new proposals.

Mr. Rusk: Is not our new front line a little better for us than it was a month ago?

General Collins: Yes.

Mr. Bohlen: I think any pull back must be reciprocal.

General Vandenberg: Yes, their face would be saved and we would have our own defenses.

Mr. Rusk: We recognized some months ago that a 20-mile zone was only a bargaining point.

Mr. Nitze: On the question of evaluation, which General Ridgway asked for, I have been in doubt what the real military situation was. Has the Communist position deteriorated? The number of MIGs has gone up, the truck citings [sightings] are high, and their casualties are up. These are all elements.

General Bradley: It is a pretty hard one to evaluate. When you weigh everything, I don’t know whether they are worse off, but they probably are because of what we can do in the air. They can’t stay in any buildings and that will be important this winter.

Mr. Bohlen: On the second point, I think there is quite a lot in the idea that they think it is time to take a crack at a settlement. There is a good chance they want an armistice, and they know we are not going to take the 38th parallel.

General Vandenberg: I think the winter is worrying them. We don’t look forward to it and we are 200% better off than they are.

Mr. Nitze: We heard one estimate that by April the Communists might be able to control the air over Korea.

General Vandenberg: By next spring we will be in better shape. I don’t think they will be able to, although they might be temporarily.

Mr. Nitze: Our Intelligence people say they have been building up MIGs at the rate of 100 a month in Korea and a good number in Germany. Our production is only 31 a month.

General Vandenberg: Thirty-one? In July our production was eleven and it was about the same in August and September. We won’t really get rolling until next fall.

General Bradley: Is there anything we can do with the armament to shoot more down?

General Vandenberg: What do you want from airplanes? We are shooting them down ten at a time and losing none of ours now.

General Bradley: Can’t we get fifty?

Mr. Bohlen: What about the situation next April?

General Vandenberg: The production curve will begin to go up. They might get control temporarily but our strength will tend to go up. If they continue their buildup they will outnumber us by November.

General Bbadley: Could we go back to the question of the telecon and help Joe by writing down some points.

General Collins: I am trying to block out an opening gambit.

General Collins then read a draft in which he stated that State Department and JCS felt that a meeting of the principal negotiators should be arranged as soon as possible. That the meeting of liaison officers was not likely to result in substantive decisions. He proposed that the principals meet at the bridge in Panmunjom and Admiral Joy could then make a proposal for a new line. He further stated that if the Communists counter with the 38th parallel we would know that further negotiations were impossible; if they were willing to discuss our proposal, then we could go ahead and discuss where the meetings could be held and under what conditions.

General Vandenberg: Should we try to get the Communists’ views first?

Mr. Bohlen: I think we should make our proposal first and get the discussion on that. If they are not willing to talk about our approach, we would be before the world in a good position.

General Collins: Yes, if they won’t talk about our proposal we could publish the proposal and stand before the world.

General Bradley: I was writing down some points:

1. Important principals meet as soon as possible.

2. It is better not to meet at Kaesong.

3. We share General Ridgway’s fear for his negotiators unless he secures satisfactory conditions.

4. We might suggest the site used by the liaison officer.

5. Attach great importance to the initial substantive proposal in the first meeting, and we could use the State Department draft for this part of our message.

6. We could then use the rest of the State Department paper explaining why we attach such importance to this.

Mr. Nitze: The first thing we might want to get would be General Ridgway’s ideas for an alternative site and arrangements.

General Collins: I think that would develop in the telecon.

General Bradley: There is a slight danger that we might end up in argument about the site. If Kaesong is out then we are in for a wrangle on the site because the other people won’t have instructions on anything but Kaesong.

Mr. Nitze: The worry about the safety of the principal negotiators is not, I feel, a good public relations position, because we are losing a good many men every day in Korea.

General Bradley: That is a good point. If we have hundred of casualties because a few fellows with stripes don’t want to go and talk it is not good public relations.

Admiral Fechteler: I would think the last thing the Commies would want to do would be to harm our negotiators.

Mr. Nitze: The renewal of incidents as a way of fuzzing up discussion on inspection or some other point worries me more than the safety of the negotiators.

Mr. Bohlen: If they start an incident thing again, you may be fairly sure that they are not too serious about negotiations.

The meeting then broke up and Generals Collins and Bolte and Messrs. Nitze, Bohlen and Merchant remained to draft telecon material.

[Attachment]

Draft Message for General Ridgway, Prepared in the Department of State

The Department of State suggests that a message be sent General Ridgway along following lines in reply to his C51500 and his C51575:

For reasons given in JCS.80658 and reaffirmed in JCS 82147⁶ we remain unwilling to risk definitive breakdown armistice talks by categorical refusal to negotiate further in Kaesong. Accordingly, authority requested in para 9b ur C51575 cannot be granted under present circumstances. It is desired that early meeting of full delegations be arranged in order to ascertain if in fact attitude of Communist liaison officers described in your C51545 falls within two hypotheses tentatively suggested by you and does in fact reflect anxiety on part Soviet or Chinese Communist governments, or both, to obtain armistice, provided their minimum terms, as yet undisclosed, can be secured. You should therefore through your liaison officers resume effort agree on time for such meeting in Kaesong.

On assumption that such arrangements can be promptly concluded, first order of business would be agreement on mutually acceptable arrangements for conduct of negotiations, including further exploration of possible change in site. It is suggested this might be handled through subcommittee in order to proceed promptly to substance.

It is believed here that great importance attaches to initial substantive position adopted by UNC delegation.

In determining initial position and any subsequent action, it is believed here that effect on following four points must be borne in mind:

(1) Our own negotiating position.

(2) Communist estimate of our position and intentions.

(3) World opinion from propaganda point of view and importance of maintaining U.S. domestic support.

(4) Attainment of our objective, which is to secure an armistice, provided our minimum terms can be secured.

It is believed here that to adopt as initial position submission specific proposal in writing described in para 2 your C51500 would constitute in effect reversion to original UNC negotiating position of last July and retrogression from position established in sub-delegation meeting August 22. Many advantages would accrue to picking up at point where talks broke down August 23.

As stated in JCS 82085,⁷ Communist negotiating position may be fluid for brief period following reopening negotiations. All of foregoing argues for taking advantage of position apparently established in sub-delegation meeting August 22.

Following statement regarding our disappointment that so much time has been lost, for reasons for which they must bear responsibility, UNC delegate should remind Communists that at last meeting of sub-delegations on August 22 Communists had stated that so long as we adhered to our previously stated position no progress could be made and that we had replied that so long as they adhered to unrealistic 38th parallel as line of demarcation no progress could be made. At that point in discussion of sub-delegations there arose question of line of contact and its relation to line of demarcation and demilitarized zone. Principle was agreed that relation existed and that adjustments could be made to the line of contact by advances and withdrawals by both sides in such a way as to fix a military demarcation line. At this point the talks were broken off. Restatement of this agreed principle appears proper point at which they should be resumed. Accordingly, following statement along lines foregoing, UNC delegate should submit a map reflecting proposal along lines described in para 1 of JCS 82085. For reasons given in JCS 82085 this map should be accompanied by brief written statement referring to principle agreed on August 22 and describing proposal.

1. The source text represents a State Department draft, not cleared with any of the participants.
2. Supra.
3. See telegram JCS 82147, September 21, p. 927.
3. See telegram JCS 82147, September 21, p. 927.
4. See infra.
5. Reference is to General Collins.
6. Dated September 2 and September 21, pp. 882 and 927, respectively.
7. Dated September 21, p. 924.